ikanf af ^oxxpt^^. 






UNITED STATES OF AMEEICA. 



^ 



THE AMBEICAI REPUBLIC 



AND 



HUMAN LIBERTY 



FORESHADOWED IN SCRIPTURE 



BY 



KEY. GEOEGE S. PHILLIPS, A. M. 

If 



CINCINNATI: 

PUBLISHED BY POB k HITCHCOCK 



FOR THE AUTHOR. 



R, P. THOMPSOIT, PRINTBR. 
1864. 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, 
BY GEOROE S. PHILLIPS, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
Southern District of Ohio. 



TO 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 
AND THE 

COMMANDER-IN-CHTEF OF THE ARMY AND NAVY, 

AND THE 

GREAT EMANCIPATOR, UNDER GOD, OF ENSLAVED MILLIONS: 
TO THE 

OFFICERS AND SOLDIERS OF THE ARMY AND NAVT, 

THE BRAVE DEFENDERS OF HUMAN LIBERTY 
AND TO THE 

LOYAL PEOPLE THROUaHOUT THE UNITED STATES, 

* WHO HAVE STOOD BY THE GOVERNMENT, 
AND 

SUSTAINED THE WAR, 
IS 



RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED. 



IIS'TEODUOTIOK'. 



The subject presented in these pages is one which, 
it seems to us, has not received that attention 
which its importance demands. It was in consid- 
eration of this fact that the author was led to pre- 
sent this work to the reading public. If in doing 
so he shall throw any light upon the subject, or by 
its discussion provoke others to do so, he shall feel 
more than compensated for all his labor. 

The greater portion of the matter contained in 
the work was prepared and delivered in the form of 
lectures, in St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church, 
in Tiffin, Ohio, in the latter part of the Winter of 
1863. At the time of their delivery their publica- 
tion was earnestly solicited; but before the course 
was completed, the writer was called to the chap- 
laincy of the 49th Regiment of Ohio Volunteer In- 
fantry, and a part of the subsequent preparation 
has been made amid the various and pressing duties 
of camp life. The subject, at this time, is one of 
special interest. Eebellious hands are raised to strike 
down our temple of liberty, affirming that it is only 



6 INTRODUCTION. 

a structure of man's rearing; that grave errors 
were committed by its founders; and that a better 
may be built upon its ruins. At such a time it be- 
comes us as a people to examine the foundation of 
our Government; and determine whether it has been 
built upon the rock, or only upon the sand; to in- 
quire whether God has had any thing to do in 
planting us as a great free nation. 

When out on old ocean, in the midst of the terri- 
ble gale which threatens the destruction of the ves- 
sel, the experienced sailor, as he feels the noble 
ship quiver and tremble like a thing of life, in the 
death struggle, longs to place his feet on solid earth ; 
so in times like these, when God has risen to shake 
the earth, when thrones are made to tremble, and 
the hearts of their occupants fail them, because of 
fear, while they hear God saying, '^ Remove the dia- 
dem and take off the crown;" when God is trying 
men, and systems, and overturning, and overturn- 
ing, there is a felt want among men of fixed, im- 
mutable principles, which depend upon neither times, 
nor places, nor circumstances, on which man can 
repose in the midst of the tempest, with unbounded 
confidence. It is a common saying, that the supply 
is always equal to the demand. As in commerce, 
and the professions, so it is in regard to the wants 
of man's higher nature. This demand of humanity 
is being met, in the investigations and developments 
of the day. The tendency of the age is in the 
direction of first principles, of root ideas; man is 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

searching after the foundation, in science, in govern- 
ment, and in religion, and he will not be content 
till he is conscious that he rests upon the sure foun- 
dation, the rock of truth. 

This tendency of the age has been the cause of 
great alarm to some of the dwellers upon the watch- 
towers of Zion. To us it is one of the most hopeful 
signs of the times. It is evidence that mankind 
are 'thinking for themselves; that the world is pro- 
gressing, and it is a certain prelude and pledge of 
the destruction of those systems of error which 
originated in times of superstition and ignorance, 
and which have always dreaded the light, and 
shunned investigation. An overgrown credulity, 
which receives the ''immaculate conception" and 
''coat of Treves" as truths not to be questioned or 
doubted, is as much to be dreaded as that unbelief 
which calls in question revealed truth. Truth never 
loses by investigation; but, on the other hand, it 
always gains immensely. It is not true that it is 
the creature of -time; it is the daughter of eternity, 
and, like its Divine Author, is imperishable. 

" Truth crushed to earth will rise again ; 
The eternal years of God are hers." 

Human progress does not consist in the acquisition 
of new faculties of mind, but in the perception and 
application of truth. 

What the mercury is to the thermometer, Divine 
truth is to the human soul; the one does not more 
clearly indicate the temperature of the atmosphere 



8 INTRODUCTION. 

than does the perception and application of the 
other mark the progress of the race in the direc- 
tion of a higher civilization. As the warm rays of 
the sun falling upon the mercury cause it to rise, so 
Divine truth shining in upon the mind of man, gives 
to it power of expression. 

It often happens that the new discovery of truth 
comes in direct contact with some old-established 
prejudice, and we seem for a time more anxious to 
retain the error, because an old acquaintance, than 
to possess the truth. We should always be willing 
to give up an old opinion, or renounce a former 
view, when convinced that we are wrong. It v/as a 
saying of one of the old philosophers, that, ''he who 
being convinced of his error renounces it, says by so 
doing, I am wiser to-day than I was yesterday." 
In every system of truth there is always some 
great first principle, which sustains to other princi- 
ples a relation like to that of the root to the other 
parts of the plant, or that of the foundation to the 
edifice. As the plant is developed in harmony with 
organic laws, which inhere in the root, and as the 
building rises, in accordance with laws which inhere 
in the foundation, so the progress of the race is in 
harmony with first principles. 

Such being the fact, it is of the greatest import- 
ance that foundation truths be brought out and 
made familiar to the public mind. Cousin has said 
that in all investigations, as long as we have seized 
only isolated, disconnected facts, as long as we have 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

not referred them to a general law, we possess the 
materials of science, but there is yet no science. 
Even physics commence only when universal truths 
appear, to which all the facts of the same order that 
observation discovers to us in nature may be re- 
ferred. Plato has said there is no science of the 
transitory. At present there are no foundation 
truths which it is so important should be brought 
out and made prominent as those of the equality 
and dignity of human nature, and the government 
of man over his fellow-man. If ''all men are 
created equal, and endowed with inalienable rights 
of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," then 
the government of man over man must harmonize 
with this idea of the nature of man, and must 
therefore be republican. If all men are not equal 
in their natural rights; if, in the language of Dr. 
Smith, of Virginia, ''slavery is the normal condition 
of the race," then must government harmonize with 
that idea, and must therefore be despotic. 

It is not consistent with the Divine character to 
suppose that, on a subject of such vital importance 
to man as that of civil government, he would fail to 
reveal his will. And it is well for man that he has 
not been left dependent upon the speculations of his 
own reason in regard to this matter. It is well for 
the world that God has spoken upon this subject; 
that we have a more sure word of prophecy, to 
which we do well to take heed, as unto a light that 
shineth in a dark place. 



10 INTRODUCTION. 

In this work we have first aimed to direct the 
mind to those truths which lie at the foundation of 
human liberty. We have taken the position, that 
God has spoken upon this subject in the Holy Scrip- 
tures, in language not to be misunderstood; that 
the great principles of civil liberty were first taught 
by Jehovah to his ancient people, the Hebrews, and 
embodied in a form of government, known to us as 
the Jewish theocracy, in which the law was Divine, 
and the instrument of administration human. This 
is the Divine idea of the government of man over 
his fellow-man; Grod is the lawgiver, man the ad- 
ministrator of the law. This does not forbid human 
legislation, which accords with the law of God as 
to the manner of administration that is found in the 
Hebrew system. 

The Hebrew Eepublic, for such it really was, we 
claim was a type of our own Government, just as 
the Jewish Church was a type of the Christian 
Church. The resemblance between the two govern- 
ments as traced in the second chapter of this work, 
is certainly very remarkable. The Hebrew Govern- 
ment was adapted by God to that high state of civ- 
ilization enjoyed by his people, and but for their 
wickedness would have been continued down to the 
time of Christ's advent, and with the modifications 
of the Christian dispensation, would have been to 
the Christian Church what it was to the Church 
under the old dispensation. But the government, 
as a theocratic republic, ceased to exist; hence its 



INTRODUCTION. 11 

future rise became a subject of prophecy. As it 
bad been thrown down, its rise is spoken of by the 
prophet as a restoration, to be effected by direct 
Divine interposition. It is to be '^ set up by the 
God of heaven." It is the "restored Israel" of the 
last time. 

We doubt not that the idea that the American 
Republic and human liberty should be pointed out 
by prophecy, will strike some of our readers as 
novel, for the reason that many who have written 
upon the subject of prophecy, wrote before we be- 
came a nation, and therefore made no mention of 
us, while most of the others who have written since 
never once seemed to think of America's being in 
prophecy. We are accustomed to see all other 
countries included in the geographical map of proph- 
ecy but our own, no matter how small. But the 
fact that we have not been honorably mentioned, or 
mentioned at all, by the commentators, is no evi- 
dence that we do not figure in prophecy. Such is 
the nature of prophecy, that it is impossible to sup- 
pose that the American Republic should be omitted. 
As to the fact that our Government was estab- 
lished by God himself, it is as clear as it is that he 
established the Hebrew theocracy ; and it is remark- 
able that the mode of the Divine procedure in both 
instances was nearly the same. 

So far as it regards the Divine purpose in plant- 
ing the United States, we can not think we claim 
too much. One of the means which God uses in 



12 INTRODUCTION. 

conquering the world to Christ is civil government ; 
and, as a ''power ordained of God," it has its place 
in the Divine plan. We are not to forget that it is 
to be preceded by the transforming power of the 
Gospel. Eepublican government is that civil form, 
which a people who have felt the changing power 
of the Gospel, will always take to themselves, because 
of its perfect adaptation to their high state of in- 
telligence. 

No one, it is to be presumed, will call in question 
the facts touching our national apostasy and en- 
slavement, nor the position as to the war being so 
overruled by Infinite Wisdom, as to bring back the 
nation from its apostasy, and destroy the institution 
of slavery. The present war is a terrible remedy 
for a terrible disease, and God, who maketh the 
wrath of man to praise him, is bringing out of it 
much good to the nation and the world. 

Wp have ventured a few thoughts as to the future 
of the American Eepublic. Is it too much, consid- 
ering the nature of the mission of Christ, to claim 
for mankind universal liberty, and for republican 
government equal dominion with the Church of 
Christ? 

In conclusion, we would say, let these great lead- 
ing truths be impressed upon the national mind; 
let our youth, in the schools of the nation, be no 
longer taught that we are indebted to pagan Greece 
and Eome for political freedom, but that civil lib- 
erty is from Him from whom cometh every good 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

and perfect gift; that tlie American Republic was 
established by God; that it was established for wise 
and noble purposes; that it is to come out of its 
present difficulty purified as gold from the crucible ; 
that it is to become world-wide, and stand forever, 
and we shall do away with that national impiety 
which has been growing upon us as a people, and 
over which the true patriot has so long mourned. 

That this work is free from error, and above crit- 
icism, we do not claim; that it may do good, in 
elevating the tone of political sentiment among our 
people, and contribute in some degree to the cause 
of human liberty, is the earnest desire and fervent 
prayer of the author. 

GEORGE S. PHILLIPS. 
Bbookdale, Ohio. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 

PAOE. 

Civil Liberty of Divine Origin 21 

Liberty, 21. Its origin, 22. Importance of the subject, 22. Our 
nation tried, 22. Erroneous opinions on the origin of civil lib- 
erty, 23. Of Divine origin, 24. Liberty in Greece and Rome, 
24. Not originated by them, 25. Plato, 25. The Christian 
fathers, 26. Tyranny, 26. Liberty established among the He- 
brews, 27. The Jewish theocracy, 28. God's will revealed, 28. 

CHAPTER 11. 

The Hebrew Commonwealth the Type of the American... 31 
Types in the Sacred Scriptures, 31. Character of the prophecies, 
32. The symbolic character best adapted to the human mind, 
34. Nature typical, 34. Typology characterized, 35. Dr. 
Bushnell's opinion, 36. The Jewish Church typical of the 
Christian, 38. Their government typical of the American, 38. 
Fairbairn's Typology quoted, 38. The three rules for determ- 
ining the type, 38. Chevalier's law, 39. The Hebrew com- 
monwealth, 40. 1. Its State sovereignty, 40. 2. Separate 
government, 40. 3. Constitution, 41. 4. Chief magistrate, 42. 
Representative government, 43. Mode of electing oflScers, 44. 
5. The judiciary, 45. 6. Law of evidence, 46. 7. Trial by 
jury, 46. Education, 47. The American system, 49. Our ear- 
liest schools, 50. Number of schools among the Hebrews, 51. 

CHAPTER III. 

The American Republic the Restored Nation of Proph- 
ecy 53 

Our Government a subject of prophecy, 53. Why not noticed by 
expositors, 56. The civil polity of the Hebrews misunderstood, 
57. The literal restoration of Israel impossible, 58. Not 
countenanced by Christ and his apostles, 58. Terms employed 
in the prophecies, 59. Refer to a Christian republic, 60. The 

15 



16 - CONTENTS. 

PAGB. 

promised nationality described, 61. 1. Geographical boundary 
of its domain, 61. 2. Its previous condition, 61. 3. A place 
of spacious riyers, 63. 4. The new nation, one gathered out of 
all nations, 64. This prophecy fulfilled literally, 65. 5. The 
promised nationality a republic, 67. 6. Distinguished for rapid 
advancement of intelligence and Divine instruction, 68. 

CHAPTER IV. 

The American Republic the Nation Born in a Day. 70 

The prophecy, 70. Is it fulfilled ? 71. When fulfilled, 71. Time 
of the nation's birth, 72. The period pointed out by Daniel, 73. 
The obscure allusions, 74. How are we to determine the time 
of the end ? 74. Our own age fulfills the conditions, 74. Our 
periodical press as compared with the rest of the world, 75. 
Our schools, 76. Church enterprises, 76. The time described 
by prophetic days, 77. What is a prophetic day ? 78, Hebrew 
divisions of time, 78. How distinguished, 79. The seventy 
weeks of abbreviated time, 80. Reckoned from what point, 80. 
Justified according to the Sacred calendar, 81. Mathematical 
calculations, 82. The exact time thus determined, 82. An- 
other calculation, 83. Same result reached, 83. 

CHAPTER V. 

The American Republic the Fifth Power Symbolized by 
THE Stone Cut from the Mountain 85 

The vision and the interpretation, 85. Does not refer to Christi- 
anity, 86. Kingdom of God established in patriarchal ages, 87. 
The fifth power to remain independent, 88. Can not mean the 
Church, for its origin does not synchronize with that of the 
Church, 90. Was to come out of the Church, 91. Indicates 
the same kind of government as the preceding four powers, 92. 
Tillinghast's argument, 92. 

CHAPTER VI. 

The American Republic Symbolized by the Man-child 
Born in the Wilderness 94 

The prophecy, 94. I. The woman driven into the wilderness, 94. 
1. The woman symbolizes the Church, 94. 2. The dragon sym- 
bolizes the tyranny of the Roman Empire, 95. 3. Only one 
flight of the woman, 95. 4. Her flight symbolizes the Pilgrims 
flying to America, 95. Reasons for this interpretation, 97. 
Such a fulfillment agrees with the prophecy, 98. II. The man- 



CONTENTS. 17 

PAOE. 

child born in the wilderness, 99. Does not represent Con- 
stantine, 99. Symbolizes a civil power, 100. The power indi- 
cated is a civilized and enlightened Christian nationality, 101. 
1. The nationality an offspring of the Church, 102. The Amer- 
ican Republic the child of Christianity, 102. Proofs of this 
statement, 102. Bancroft quoted, 102. "Webster, 103. Chris- 
tianity and liberty coincident, 104. 2. The Christian religion a 
preparation of the struggle for liberty, 105. The Reformation, 
106. Civil and religious liberty, 107. The American Revolu- 
tion an outgrowth of the Reformation, 109. 3. The new 
nationality protected by God, 112. Attempts to crush it, 112. 
Monarchy assisting the new republic, 115. France and Lafay- 
ette, 115. 

CHAPTER VII. 

The American Republic Established by the Direct In- 
terposition OF God 120 

The fifth power established by God, 120. 1. God's disapproval of 
monarchies, 120. 2. God never plants monarchies, 120. 3. 
God's plan the same with the United States as with the He- 
brew commonwealth, 121. (1.) Both nations tried in the fiery 
furnace, 122. (2.) The place of the nation's planting provi- 
dentially prepared, 123. (3.) God's safe conduct of our fathers 
to the New World, 125. The Divine interposition in our Rev- 
olutionary struggle, 126. "Washington, 127. His religious 
character, 128. James Otis, 130. Joseph "Warren, 131. Sam- 
uel Adams, 132. Patrick Henry, 133. John Hancock, 133. 
Thomas Jefferson, 133. Dr. Franklin, 135. Revolutionary 
women, 136. God's interposition manifest in teaching our Sen- 
ators wisdom, 140. Prayers in the Continental Congress, 141. 
Public fasts, 142. Thanksgiving, 143. Bibles ordered, 143. 
God's guiding hand in the formation of the Constitution, 145. 
1. Qualifying the workmen for their work, 145. 2. Showing 
the founders their need of Divine help, 145. The Convention 
embarrassed, 146. Dr. Franklin's motion to open the sessions 
with prayer, 147. Remarks on the motion, 148. The motion 
carried, 150. 3. Light and wisdom bestowed in answer to 
prayer, 150. 4. Public acknowledgment of the Divine help, 151. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

The Divine Purpose in Planting the American Re- 
public 154 

True idea of a nation, 154. "What is a nation? 155. God's pur- 
pose in our planting set forth in our "life covenant," the Doola- 



13 CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 

ration of Independence, 166. Proper estimate of humanity, 
157. How men were regarded in ancient times, 158. Kad- 
ical idea of a republic, 159. The principle applied in the 
Church by Wesley, 160. The Divine purpose in harmony with 
the plan of redemption and the foundation of the Church, 160. 
How these views are to be reconciled with slavery, 161. No 
connection between the two, 161. Views of our Revolutionary 
fathers on slavery, 163. Washington, 163. Jefferson, 164. 
Dr. Franklin, 166. Abolition memorial, 166. Hamilton, 167. 
Madison, 167. John Adams, 168. Patrick Henry, 169. Mod- 
ern views, 170. Our Grovernment to be expansive, 170. The 
trust given to us, 171. 

CHAPTER IX. 

Our Apostasy as a Nation 174 

Our apostasy seen in our failure to carry out the Divine purpose, 
174. Christianity in its relation to civil polity, 174. Slavery 
cherished, 176. Outrage against humanity, 177. Effects of 
slavery, 178. Southern views, 178. Our public men plotting 
treason, 179. Contrast between modern writers and our earlier 
statesmen, on this subject, 179. Apostasy of the Church in the 
slave States, 182. Early testimony against slavery, 183. In- 
fluence of slavery on the Church in the free States, 183. 

CHAPTER X. 

The Oppression of the Nation by the Slave Power.... 185 
American slavery, 185. Hebrew servitude, 185. Slavery among 
the Romans, 186. Our laws prohibiting emancipation, 186. 
Slavery in other countries, 187. The non-slaveholding white 
population in the South, 187. Offices filled by slaveholders, 
188. The school system in slave States, 189. Influence of 
slavery on the Church, 190. On the press, 190. On the civil 
government, 192. Degrading influence of slavery, 193. De- 
mands of the slave power, 193. The plotting of treason, 194. 
Dispersion of our army, navy, and munitions of war, 195. 
Slavery despotism, 196. 

CHAPTER XL 

The American Republic and the Present Rebellion..... 197 

War a Divine agency, 197. The American Republic born amidst 

war, 198. The struggle against slavery, 198. The deliverance, 

199. The period of strife, 200. The great contest, 200. The 

hostile parties arrayed for the conflict, 200. The apocalyptic 



CONTENTS. 19 

- PAGE. 

symbols, 201. The predictions concerning the war, 201. The 
symbols explained, 201. The place of the war, 202. What is 
signified by heaven, 202. Michael represents the genius of our 
free institutions, 203. The genius of our Government not to be 
confounded with the wrong-doing in the nation, 204. The 
Church is the Lamb's bride, though there are many things in 
it that Christ can not approve, 204. The dragon symbolizes 
the slave power, 204. The rattle-snake emblem well chosen, 
205. The dragon distinguished from the great red dragon, 205. 
The war in heaven, 206. The end proposed by the rebellion, 
207. The Union destined to be victorious, 208. Assisting the 
enemy, 208. The result, 209. The President, on leaving his 
home in Illinois, invoking prayers, 210. The prayers heard 
and answered, 211. The President's character, 212. The 
Emancipation Proclamation, 213. God's providence seen in 
the war, 213. Succession of Union victories, 213. Change in 
public sentiment on the subject of slavery, 213. The nation 
purified, 217. Practical benevolence, 217. God with us, 217. 

CHAPTER XII. 

The Genius of the American Republic to Destroy the 
Monarchies of the World 219 

The image of Nebuchadnezzar's dream a symbol of various mon- 
archies, 219. Their history, 219. The first monarchy, 219. 
The second, 219. The third and the fourth, 220. The Roman 
Empire, 220. Union of Church and State, 220. Fate of the 
fourth, 221. The fifth power symbolized, 222. How the fourth 
monarchy was to be destroyed, 223. Church and State to be 
disunited, 223. National education, 224. Common schools, 
224. Written constitutions, 224. Influence of our Govern- 
ment, 225. Russia, 226. Emancipation of the serfs, 226. 
Western Europe, 227. Aggressive influence of republican 
doctrines, 228. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

The American Republic Destined to Become Unitersal...231 
The American Republic to destroy monarchy, 231. No cessation 
of government, 231. Republican government universal, 231. 
Preparation of the world for this event, 232. God's pains- 
taking to consummate this end, 232. The prediction of the 
event as fulfilled, 232. This view consistent with prophecy, 
and the desires and expectations of mankind, 232. In har- 
mony with the universal laws of mind, 233. Harmonizes with 



20 CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



the Divine plan regarding the universal dominion of Christi- 
anity, 233. No other form of government adapted to our 
Christian civilization, 234. 

CHAPTER XIV. 
The American Republic Perpetual 235 

As Christianity is to be perpetual, so is republican government, 
235. This position sustained by the "Word of God, 235. Our 
laws changed so as to conform to the Divine law, 235. Our 
rulers to be able men, such as fear God and hate covetousness, 
235. The day coming when righteousness shall be in the as- 
cendance, 236. The future destiny and glory of the United 
States, 236. 



THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 



CHAPTER I. 

CIVIL LIBERTY OF DIVINE ORIGIN. 

Liberty! What talismanic power in that single 
word! Its utterance thrills and moves the human 
soul, and always finds a response in the human heart, 
whether savage or civilized. The principle is one 
of the strongest of our nature. When combined 
with the higher element of Christianity it is the 
source of the mightiest and sublimest efforts of 
human genius. It is the grand instrument of hu- 
man advancement. Its leading characteristic is en- 
ergy — energy waking to life and action the powers 
that sleep in the human soul, and the might that 
slumbers in the human arm. The grandest achieve- 
ments, and the noblest efforts of valor, and the sub- 
limest ministrations of benevolence, the richest fruits 
of human industry that have illustrated and adorned 
the annals of our race, have all sprung from this 
principle. All Western Europe is to-day moved by 

its wonderful power, while the common people are 

21 



22 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

demanding, at the hands of their rulers, those rights 
and privileges which are justly theirs. 

It is a truth made manifest in the history of all 
nations, ancient and modern, that 

"'Tis liberty alone that gives the flower 
Of fleeting life its luster and perfume." 

But whence originated this essence so necessary to 
the glow and fragrance of human existence ? Where 
and by whom were its cordial elements first distilled 
and shed over the cumbrous cares of fleeting life? 
Whence was it, from heaven or of men? of Divine 
or human origin? 

This is a question at the present hour of great 
importance. Ours is an age of thought, of energy, 
of profound research, in every department of relig- 
ion, government, and science. Old systems are 
being tried, condemned, rejected, and new ones in- 
troduced in their place. That system which has 
been built on the rock of truth, and that only, shall 
be able to stand amid these sweeping revolutions. 
Never before in the history of the world were sys- 
tems of error swept away in so brief a period of time. 
God is already saying, "Remove the diadem, and 
take off the crown: this shall not be the same: ex- 
alt him that is low, and abase him that is high. I 
will overturn, overturn, overturn it, until He come 
whose right it is." Ezek. xxi, 26, 27. 

Our own nation is being tried as by fire. The 
storm-cloud of civil war, which has hung over us for 



ORIGIN OF CIVIL LIBERTY. 23 

nearly three years, still darkens our political heav- 
ens, while our enemies, at home and abroad, by land 
and sea, predict our downfall. We are told that our 
civil polity is only the work of erring men, and that 
our effort at republican government is about to have 
an end. How important at such a time is the in- 
quiry as to the origin of civil liberty! He who 
knows not the source whence he has derived his civil 
rights and privileges is incapable either of properly 
estimating or rightly preserving them. He can not 
fully appreciate them because he knows not the price 
at which they have been purchased, or the hight from 
which they have been brought. He can not properly 
preserve them ; for, in ignorance, he may close up the 
very fountain from which he has been di-inking, and 
extinguish the very torch by whose light he has been 
walking. If they have an origin higher than mere 
human expediency, they have also a value higher than 
mere human invention. If they have been given to us 
by means more potent and pure than the mere theories 
of statesmen or the tactics of the soldier, they can not 
surely be retained if these means are undervalued or 
rejected. 

It is strange that an American citizen should ever 
have entertained erroneous opinions upon a subject of 
such vital importance as the origin of civil liberty. 
And yet, strange as it may seem, it is nevertheless 
true that the popular idea taught our youth upon this 
subject, in the schools of the country, is, that civil lib- 
erty was born and cradled in the ancient States of 



24 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

Greece and Rome; that the renowned lawgivers of 
these pagan republics were the fathers of pohtical free- 
dom to the world. This notion we regard as a serious 
evil, and one which should be at once corrected. 

Civil liberty, whether we consider the innate 
principle which is a part of ours elf, or those laws, or 
that polity by which it is regulated for the safety and 
interest of the society. State, or nation, is of Divine 
origin. We claim that it was first taught by God 
himself to the ancient Hebrews, and embodied in a 
form of government known as the Hebrew theocracy. 
This theocratic form of goverment was given to the 
Hebrews in fulfillment of promises made to Abraham, 
their venerable ancestor and progenitor, four hundred 
and thirty years before they reached Sinai. 

The pagan governments of Greece and Rome were 
never in a condition to accomplish so great a work. 
The stream can not rise higher than the fountain. 
"Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles? 
Can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit?" Matt, 
vii, 16. These governments have been vastly over- 
rated. They never were republics in the proper 
signification of that term ; nothing more than over- 
grown aristocracies, where for every free man there 
were forty slaves. In none of these boasted repub- 
lics were political rights extended to the mass of the 
people. Dark, crushing, and helpless oppression was 
the lot of the poor man's life and the legacy of the 
poor man's child. That there were bright lights in 
the galaxy of these ancient States, men of rare gen- 



ORIGIN OF CIVIL LIBERTY. 25 

ius, who felt all the force, and, in a measure, compre- 
hended the nature, of this great principle, we admit ; 
while w^e do not forget that an eiFort to teach them to 
others secured a martyr's crown, as in the case of the 
noble Socrates and others. 

Why should we ascribe to the ancients that which 
they never claimed? They never pretended to have 
originated their principles of civil liberty, but to 
have received them from their gods. Thus the laws 
of Crete are said to have been given by Minos, and 
were received by him through inspiration from Ju- 
piter. Lycurgus, the Spartan lawgiver, professed 
to have received the principles of law from Apollo. 
Numa Pompilius proclaimed himself indebted to 
Egcria for the statutes and ordinances which formed 
the foundation of Roman greatness and subsequent 
Roman supremacy. This admission on the part of the 
ancient heathen lawgivers we regard as of special 
importance in its relation to the subject under con- 
sideration. They had the truth broken and corrupted. 
For certainly all this is but a corrupted account of 
the giving of the law by Jehovah to Moses, amid 
thunderings of Sinai. Suppose in the Cretan tradi- 
tion alluded to, we substitute for the doubtful law- 
giver, Minos, the actual Moses, and for the fabulous 
Jupiter the true Jehovah. This done the myth 
vanishes, and the Scriptural truth is restored in all 
its beauty and sublimity. 

Plato, that devout and lofty sage, whose philosophy 
for so many ages ruled the world of mind, demanded 



26 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

assent to the truths which he taught, mainlj on the 
ground that it was ^'God-given wisdom," The ancient 
fathers, Justin Martyr, Cyril, Tertullian, and others, 
affirm that Plato derived many of his ideas from the 
writings of Moses, and that he would have mentioned 
his name as a teacher of the one and only God, but 
from fear of the Areopagus.* We must then go 
further back than to either Athens or Sparta for the 
origin of this blessing, so deeply interwoven with 
the progress and happiness of man. It w^as not 
Greece speaking from the halls of the Acropolis, but 
the wisdom of God speaking from the clouded sum- 
mit of Sinai, and the verdant plains of Moab, which 
first instructed mankind in the principles of civil 
liberty. These great principles were received by 
Moses, and proclaimed to the Hebrews long before 
the world had learned to lisp the names of Lycurgus, 
Solon, or Numa, and while the Greeks and. Romans 
were yet in a savage state, and, like the Digger In- 
dians of California, living on nuts and acorns. 

It is a well-known fact of history, that at the time 
of the exodus of the Israelites, tyranny had become 
one of the so*est of curses, and one from which 
mankind knew no means of escape. Every-where 
the life, happiness, and liberty of the subject were at 
the will of the despot, who, intoxicated with power, 
ruled over men as the Southerli slaveholder rules 
over his human chattels, or a Mexican buccarrow 

*' Christ in History. Turnbull. 



ORIGIN OF CIVIL LIBERTY. 27 

rules over herds of cattle. Light brought to bear 
upon the subject, from that interesting department 
of knowledge, hieroglyphic literature, shows those 
systems of government to have been the most 
cruel and despotic of which it is possible for us to 
conceive. The world had experimented on govern- 
ment through the preceding ages, but had failed to 
devise a system in which the liberties of the masses 
were regarded. 

AVhen the Hebrews escaped from a long and cruel 
bondage, how opportune for Him, who is the fount- 
ain of wisdom and goodness, to interpose for the 
purpose of showing how a nation should be governed, 
so as best to secure its rights and liberties! If it 
be asked why this instruction was not given earlier, 
we answer the world was not prepared to receive it. 
" The fullness of time " had not come. It was neces- 
sary that men should test their own ability to govern 
each other, independent of God, and taste the bitter- 
ness of oppression, as in the case of the Israelites 
in Egypt, in order to be fully prepared to receive 
and rightly appreciate this Divine bestowment. In 
like manner, a Savior was withheld ^ill man became 
fully satisfied of his inability to save himself, and was 
brought deeply to feel his need of a Divine super- 
natural deliverer. So world-wide was this felt want 
of humanity, that the Savior was appropriately 
spoken of by the prophet Haggai as the " Desire of 
all nations." 

The Jewish theocracy, in its leading characteristics, 



28 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

was intended by its great Author as a model govern- 
ment. It combined, in a very remarkable degree, lib- 
erty with law, the freedom of the individual with the 
welfare of the community. The great principles of 
constitutional law, as applied to civil and criminal 
jurisprudence, were here developed and reduced to 
practice in the administration of public affairs, and 
have since constituted the lights and landmarks to 
direct the labors of statesmen and legislators. The 
fact is, the government was strictly repubhcan. We 
believe w^ith Dr. Matthews, "that the Hebrew Gov- 
ernment was a theocracy only in a limited sense. 
The Hebrews had their civil rulers, like other nations — 
men who exercised authority over other men, and who 
were acknowledged throughout the land as rightful 
magistrates." True, the law was divine; but the 
government, or instrument of administration, was hu- 
man. And the same is true of all pure republics. 
It seems to have been one object of Jehovah's divine 
legislation to frame enactments which show how civil 
authority, of man over man, should be created, and 
how it should be administered so as best to promote 
the welfare of the people. 

Here, then, God has distinctly revealed his will on 
the subject of government, so that we need be at no 
loss to determine the form which meets the Divine 
approval. A remarkable instance of his disapproba- 
tion of the kingly form of government occurred at 
the time that the people of Israel became dissatisfied 
with their representative government, and asked to 



ORIGIN OF CIVIL LIBERTY. 29 

have it changed like to that of the heathen around 
about them. He said to Samuel, '' Protest solemnly 
unto them, and show them the manner of the king 
that shall reign over them." And in obedience to his 
instructions, the prophet told all the words of the 
Lord unto the people that asked of him a king. 
"He will take," says he, "your sons, and appoint 
them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his 
horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots. 
And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and 
captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his 
ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his in- 
struments of war, and instruments of his chariots. 
And he will take your daughters to be confectionarics, 
and to be cooks, and to be bakers. And he will take 
your fields, and your vineyards, and your olive-yards, 
even the best of them, and give them to his servants. 
He will take the tenth of your seed, and of your 
vineyards, and give them to his officers, and to his 
servants. And he will take your men-servants, and 
your maid-servants, and your goodliest young men, 
and your asses, and put them to his work. He will 
take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his 
servants. And ye shall cry out in that day because 
of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and 
the Lord will not hear you in that day." 1 Sam. 
viii, 11-18. Such is the solemn protest of Jehovah 
against an earthly monarchy; and how fully has the 
Divine affirmation been confirmed in the history of 
earthly kings ! 



30 THE AMEEICAN REPUBLIC. 

The Hebrew republic existed four hundred and 
sixty-four years. During all that time Jerusalem 
was the great moral light-house of the Old World. 
From this luminous center, light rayed forth into the 
darkness of the surrounding nations. 

God having thus made known, in the Bible, his will 
on the subject of government, we should expect to 
find its subsequent teachings in harmony with that 
revealed will. In this we are not disappointed. The 
very spirit of liberty breathes through its poetry and 
prose. Its voice is heard in the Sermon on the 
Mount, and in the writings of the prophets, evangel- 
ists, and apostles. Here are found the most lofty, 
burning, and indignant strains of invective against 
all forms of oppression and tyranny. It denies the 
right of any one man, or set of men, to think for 
any other man, or set of men, without their consent, 
for the reason that all men are responsible agents, 
and each held responsible for the exercise of his own 
powers. 



THE HEBREW .COMMONWEALTH. 31 



CHAPTER II. 

THE HEBREW COMMONWEALTH A TYPE OF THE 
AMERICAN. 

The sacred Scriptures abound in types. The his- 
torical types or symbols of the Old Testament are 
found diffused over the whole period which extends 
from the creation of the world to the time when vi- 
sion and prophecy were sealed. This teaching by 
types was not alone in reference to Christ and his 
Church, but on the same tablets of shadow were 
traced the numerous events of the world's future 
history. Here were shadowed forth the rise and fall 
of States, with their collateral events ; kingdoms 
shivered by kingdoms, and empires broken to rise 
no more. But all these were to be succeeded by a 
republic which Jehovah himself should set up, and 
which should encircle the world within its genial 
folds, and remain to the end of time. 

These visions of the future, says Trail, have an 
amazing scenic effect ; are grand, sometimes gorgeous, 
beyond conception, in consequence of the substitu- 
tion of their symbolic images for the literal events 
themselves. A splendid drapery is thrown around 
these future histories, which, in the ordinary his- 



dZ THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

torian, would be extravagant; but "whicli, in the 
prophet, is dignified and becoming, as the solemn 
folds of his own prophetic mantle. There is, says 
the same writer, a noble obscurity, as when the 
clouds, gilded by the twilight from the unrisen sun, 
seem to pile up palaces upon the mountain's dusky 
summit. Any one may convince himself of this by 
turning to the pages of Ezekiel, Daniel, or John. 
A prediction which should present itself in bare 
literalities would want those spectral proportions 
which only dimness can give to it, as we see it 
move on the distinct verges of distant centuries. 
Whatever the rapt eye of the seer might itself de- 
scry, it could fling back for other eyes only mantled 
glances; and it is the working out of the symbolism 
necessary for this obscuration, which so amazingly 
exhibits the literary excellence of these prophetic 
compositions. The artistic effect in the working of 
light and shade is similar to the finest efforts of 
Rembrandt. 

The visual range of prophecy was not confined 
within our terrene horizon ; for to her eye was given 
to pierce the world unseen. Now, it will at once ap- 
pear that in his description of the invisible world, the 
prophet could only describe by means of symbols. 
His pictures of a condition of existence of which we 
have no experience, if worked in colors borrowed 
from the earth, can be no other than symbolic repre- 
sentation. The material parts of his descriptions are 
not to be taken in their literal, but in their suggest- 



THE HEBREW COMMONWEALTH. 33 

ive sense. Does lie represent heaven as a city whose 
walls are of precious stones ? This is simply a sym- 
bol of its magnificence. Are its inhabitants figured 
in white raiment, which glistens in unclouded light ? 
This is merely a symbol of their purity. The entire 
scenic representation is but one grand piece of sym- 
bolism; for, clearly, on no other principle could the 
unseen world and the future state be described if the 
descriptions are to be at all pictorial. But this once 
admitted, what an ample scope was given the prophet 
to work out the magnificent imagery of the heavenly 
world! All that is beautiful and bright, all that is 
grand and gorgeous — the magnificence of architect- 
ure, the minstrelsy of music, the wealth of Eastern 
mines, the insignia of Eastern royalty, the rich vest- 
ments of Eastern costume — all could be collected 
into the prophet's representations. He could dip 
his pen into the glories of the first Paradise ; could 
borrow beauty from the landscapes of Palestine, and 
magnificence from its palaces ; could gather into his 
pictures the sacred grandeurs which gleamed from 
the Temple, and enrich them with the loveliest hues 
from Mt. Zion, the "perfection of beauty." Or, 
working out his symbolism by means of contrast, he 
could figure a paradise where no serpent lurks to 
deceive; a sun-world where no sea lashes itself into 
storms ; an orb of light where no night alternates 
with day. In short, though what the prophet had 
to describe is that " which eye hath not seen, nor 
ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of 



84 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

man to conceive;" yet, working out his descriptions 
on the principle of symbolism, where, in any lan- 
guage, will we find a grandeur of apocalyptic im- 
agery to compare with that with which the banished 
seer of Patmos has enriched the sacred literature ? 

The bare description of the types which were ritu- 
alistic has made the Pentateuch read like a finely- 
illustrated work. It is profusely and most graph- 
ically pictorial. The pen of the sacred lawgiver 
becomes, also, the pencil of the sacred artist. The 
entire ritualism under which are vailed so many 
spiritual meanings is the grand picture-representa- 
tion of heavenly truth. * 

It is said to be a difficult thing to write suitable 
books for children, particularly so as to give to ab- 
stract truths that concrete form which will fix them 
on the infantile mind. Now here, for the Church in 
its infancy, a body of divinity had to be written — a 
theological primer which should contain in substance 
the same profound revelations of the mind of God 
which were to be given in the fullness of the times. 
How admirably suited for this purpose was the sym- 
bolistic manual which Moses prepared ! 

If we look into the volume of nature we shall dis- 
cover there a vast typical system. The leaves which 
fall in your path in Autumn-time, all have their les- 
sons of truth written in types. A leaf without a 
leaf-stalk implies a trunk naturally branched from 

* See Trail's Literary Characteristics of the Bible. 



THE HEBREW COMMONWEALTH. 35 

the ground, and a leaf with a leaf-stalk is the type 
of a tree which has naturally a bare stalk. The dis- 
tribution of the leaf-veins typifies the distribution of 
the branches of the tree; the angles of the lateral 
veins of the leaf symbolize the angles of the branches 
of the trunk. 

In this system of types, like th^it of the Scriptures, 
the earlier is a root of the prefiguration of the latter. 
The seed contains what is to become the full-grown 
plant; the embryo has within it what is to expand 
into the full-grown animal. In the earlier geological 
ages we find rudimentary forms with capacities and 
even organs which become developed only in the 
more finished forms of the later vegetable and animal 
life. 

As the natural has its epochs of creation at which 
the typical form makes a move in advance, approach- 
ing somewhat nearer to the archetypal idea, so has 
the Scriptural or supernatural its epochs of revelation 
at which we discover a corresponding advancement 
in its typical representations. As the typology of 
nature is the older of the two systems, may not 
the natural foreshadow the supernatural? This cer- 
tainly is the Divine order — the lower typifying the 
higher. There is thus unfolded a twofold aspect in 
which we may view the Scripture typology. First, 
we may follow out the analogy between the natural 
and supernatural — each presenting a typical system. 
The Scripture types may be regarded as forming a 
part of a scheme of universal providence, which 



36 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

includes in one great method both departments — 
creation and redemption, the natural and the super- 
natural. 

This interesting department of truth and typology, 
whether of the natural or supernatural, is not half 
explored. There are important lessons written there 
which the world will yet read and understand. There 
is no conflict between these two systems. Having 
the same Divine Author, they harmonize. Though 
this harmony may not always be seen at the first 
glance, yet upon a more careful examination it will 
be found in this, as in all similar cases, that between 
the truths of revelation and science there is no con- 
flict. 

Dr. Bushnell^ is of the opinion that the deformi- 
ties in nature are so many lessons written for our 
instruction. Thus a fruit-tree covers itself with an 
immense profusion of blossoms that drop and do not 
set in fruit. In this there is a hint to man of what 
may come to pass in himself; an image in which he 
may represent himself in language; a token, also, 
and proof of that most real abortion to which he 
may bring his immortal nature, despite the saving 
mercies of God. 

The same writer says of geology: "How magnifi- 
cent is the whole course of geology, or the geologic 
eras and changes taken as related to the future great 
catastrophe of man, and the renovating, supernatural 

* Nature and the Supernatural. 



THE HEBREW COMMONWEALTH. 37 

grace of his redemption! It is as if, standing on 
some high summit, we could see the great primordial 
world rolling down through gulfs and fierj cataclysms, 
where all the living races die ; thence to emerge again 
and again, when the Almighty calls it forth, a new 
creation, covered with fresh populations ; passing thus 
through a kind of geologic eternity, in so many chap- 
ters of deaths, and of darting, frisking, singing life; 
inaugurating so many geologic mornings over the 
smoothed graves of previous extinct races; and pre- 
cluding in this manner the strange world-history of 
sin and redemption, Avherein all the grandest issues 
of existence lie. This whole tossing, rending, recom- 
posing process, that we call geology, symbolizes evi- 
dently, as in highest reason it should, the grand 
spiritual catastrophe and new creation of man, which 
both together comprehend the problem of mind, and 
so the final causes or last end of all God's work. 
What we see is the beginning conversing with the 
end — an eternal forethought, reaching across the 
tottering mountains and boiling seas, to unite be- 
ginning and end together; so that we may hear the 
grinding layers of the rocks singing harshly 

* Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit 
Of that forbidden treej' 

and all the long eras of desolation and refitting bloom 
and beauty, represented in the registers of the world, 
are but the epic in stone of man's great history before 
the time." 



38 THE AMEIflCAN REPUBLIC. 

Happy shall it be for the world when 

"In the sunshine and the shower, 
In the dew-drop and the flower, 
In the ocean rocks and rill, 
In the mountain vale and hill, 
Man shall read Jehovah's will." 

And that day will as surely come as that those les- 
sons of wisdom have been written by the Infinite One 
in the book of nature. 

As the whole Jewish system was typical, we claim 
that as the Church under the old dispensation was 
the type of the Church under the new, so the gov- 
ernment which God established under the old dispen- 
sation was a type of the government which he should 
establish under the new. Is it not as reasonable that 
the civil government of the Jews should symbolize 
a government which should afterward exist, as that 
the Jewish Church should symbolize the Christian 
Church ? 

Fairbairn, an able Scotch divine, who has done a 
good service for theology, in his Typology of the 
Scriptures, in speaking of the types of the Church, 
says, "that in the institution which is denominated a 
type, there must be a resemblance to what corre- 
sponds to it under the Gospel; and that it must be 
ordained by God and intended by him to foreshadow 
the Gospel antitype." Here, then, are the rules for 
determining the type: 1. Resemblance. 2. Ordained 
of God. 3. Ordained to be typical. As to the sec- 
ond and third rules their requisites are fully met in 



THE HEBREW COMMONWEALTH. 39 

the civil governmenTo^f the Jews which was ordained 
of God, and was typical, being a part of a system, 
the whole of which was one grand array of sym- 
bolism. 

"The main point," says Chevalier, "in an inquiry 
into these historical types, is to establish the fact of a 
preconcerted connection betAveen the two series of 
events. If the first event be declared to be a type, 
and the second correspond with the prediction so de- 
livered, there can be no doubt that the correspond- 
ence was designed." 

On this we remark, that the "first event," or gov- 
ernment of the Jews, as we have seen, was typical: 
now, if we shall find upon further examination that 
the "second event," or Government of the United 
States, " corresponds " with the " prediction ;" or, in 
the language of the first rule of Fairbairn, if there is 
"resemblance," there will then be "no doubt left 
that the correspondence was designed;" or, in other 
words, there will be no doubt that the Hebrew the- 
ocracy was a prototype of the United States. 

"There is," says Trail, "in the type the fore- 
shadowing, on a lower platform, of an identical truth, 
which hereafter is to be exhibited on a higher." 
Here is presented, though differently expressed, Fair- 
bairn's law of "resemblance," and Chevalier's law 
of correspondence. Applying this rule, then, let us 
examine the "resemblance," or analogy, between the 
Hebrew Government and our own, and see if we 
shall not find the first " forcsliadowing, on a lower 



40 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

platform," the second, wMch afterward was exhibited 
on a higher. 

1. We find there existed among the Hebrews what 
we denominate ^' State sovereignty." Each tribe had 
a separate government, ensign, mihtary force, and 
municipal rules. The military of the State was 
composed of all males over the age of twenty years, 
able for war. Numbers i, 3. These separate tribes 
were so many sovereign States, like those of our own 
Union. 

2. Each tribe, or State, had its respective prince, 
or chief, answering to the Governor of a State 
among us. They were named the "Princes of the 
tribes of Israel." We have, in the first chapter of 
Numbers, a list of the names of the princes first 
appointed after the organization of the government. 
The duties of the governor relate mainly to military 
afiairs. Like our Governor, he was commander-in- 
chief of the military forces of the State. His mili- 
tary title was that of " Captain," and in case of war 
he had to take the field in person. The armies of 
most of these commanders amounted to over fifty 
thousand. The military force in the State of Sim- 
eon, of which Prince Shelumiel was in command, 
amounted to fifty-nine thousand, three hundred. 
Prince Eliab, Governor of the State of Zebulon, had 
under his command fifty- seven thousand, four hund- 
red. The entire miUtary force of the nation, at the 
time of its organization, consisted of six hundred and 
three thousand, five hundred and fifty. Numbers i, 46. 



THE HEBREAV COMMONWEALTH. 41 

3. These tribes were all united together under one 
General Government, constituting them a great na- 
tion, which might have been properly named the 
" United States of Israel." So perfect was this com- 
pact that the General Government was the only 
legitimate authority for purposes of general welfare ; 
and yet these tribes, as may be seen, from a careful 
examination into their polity and history, were not so 
absorbed as to lose their character as distinct States. 
Here we have a true type of our own "E pluribus 
Unum." 

4. They had a written constitution, which was of 
Divine origin: it was first adopted by a convention 
of elders, and afterward submitted to the whole body 
of the people for their ratification. It embraced a 
perfect code of civil law ; was carefully watched over, 
and most sacredly regarded by the people of that 
great free nation. All acts of legislation were in ac- 
cordance with this important instrument. 

This was the first written constitution the world 
had ever seen, and it never saw another till it 
looked on the Constitution of the United States. 
^'It has been our glory," says Professor Walker, in 
his American Law, ''to give the first example of a 
political organization based upon a written constitu- 
tion." This is strictly true in its application to all 
political organizations, since that of the ancient He- 
brew. ''We hear much said, it is true," says 
Walker, "of the Enghsh Constitution; but what is 

it? A mere collection of usages and precedents, 

4 



42 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

gathered up in the progress of some twenty cen- 
turies, and subject to be modified or abrogated by 
the omnipotent will of Parliament. Not so with the 
American idea of a constitution. We understand it 
to be a solemn written declaration of the sovereign 
will of the people, in their original capacity, as the 
highest earthly power, prescribing the form, and lim- 
iting the powers of the Government, which they have 
thus voluntarily created. And this idea is as simple 
as it is new and grand." 

How the guiding hand of God was seen in the 
formation of our Constitution will be shown here- 
after. We shall only remark, before leaving this sub- 
ject, that the "resemblance" here is as perfect as 
between any type and antitype which we recollect 
of the Jewish and Christian Church. 

4. Over all these sovereign States, thus united, 
there presided a Chief Magistrate. From the time 
of Joshua the presidents were called judges. " They 
were pointed out by their personal merits, appointed 
with the Divine sanction, limited by the Constitution, 
and inducted into ofiice by the unsolicited choice of 
the people. They were charged with the administra- 
tion of the general government, the settlement of 
disputes arising between different tribes, the dip- 
lomatic intercourse of the nation, and the command 
of the army. They had- the power to convoke Con- 
gress, and to issue executive orders ; but could nei- 
ther enact laws, levy taxes, nor appoint ofiicers, ex- 
cept, perhaps, the military. They were simple in 



THE HEBREW COMMONWEALTH. 43 

their manners, maintaining no retinue, and receiving 
no revenue, except the presents of a grateful people. 
Without either avarice or ambition, they felt that to 
serve their country was their highest recompense." * 
The Hebrew Commonwealth was a government by 
representation. Here the elective franchise existed 
in full force, and, for the first time on earth, is 
found the practical development of popular repre- 
sentation — the election of the ruler by the ruled — 
the public officer chosen by the public voice.. The 
celebrated Chateaubriand has classed this among the 
three or four discoveries that have created another 
universe. Where are we to seek for the origin of it? 
Most nations know nothing of it now, and there was 
a time when all were ignorant of it. The question 
is, from what fountain did it spring? What nation 
first incorporated it into the frame of its government, 
and enjoyed the freedom which it insured? Various 
writers have searched after its origin as after hid 
treasure ; but, not having sought in the right direction, 
have never ascertained from whence it emanated. 
Alison, in his History of Europe, traces it to the 
early councils of the Christian Church, where he 
thinks it originated. Had he turned to that great 
work, the Pentateuch, which has been a text-book 
for writers on all subjects of importance, he might 
have read the first proclamation of the first President 
of the first Republic, for the first election by the 

* Thomson's " Coufeilcrated Republic of Israel." 



44 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

people of their own rulers from among themselves, 
ever held on earth. Here is the proclamation made 
by the Chief Magistrate, on the eve of an election, 
to the whole nation : " Take you, out of all the 
peopUj wise men, and understanding, and known 
among your tribes, able men, such as fear God, men 
of truth, hating covetousness ; and I will make them 
rulers over you." Deut. i, 13 ; Ex. xviii, 21. Mark 
the following facts contained in this proclamation : 
1. The people were to elect. ^'Take you" — "pro- 
vide" — that is, you elect or choose. 2. This elec- 
tion was to be from among the "people," and not 
any privileged class. 3. These candidates were to 
possess certain qualifications ; they must be men of 
wisdom, of ability, of righteousness, and piety. 4. 
The inauguration was to be by the chief magistrate. 
It is to be feared that in the selection of our rulers 
we have not always followed our ancient pattern. 

After their election by the people they were in- 
ducted into office by Moses. On investing them with 
the authority to which the people had chosen them, 
he gave them a charge which it would be well for all 
Christian magistrates to observe ; a charge to " hear 
the cause between your brethren, and judge right- 
eously between man and his brother, and the stranger 
that is with him. Ye shall not respect persons in 
judgment, but ye shall hear the small as well as the 
great. Ye shall not be afraid of the face of man, 
neither take a gift ; for a gift doth blind the eyes 
and pervert the words of the wise." Deut. i, 16-19. 



THE HEBREW COMMONWEALTH. 45 

We have other instances of the right of suffrage ex- 
ercised by the people. The twelve men appointed to 
"search out the land" were chosen by the vote of 
"all Israel." The three men from each tribe who 
were selected to go through the land and describe it, 
and divide it into seven parts, for the seven tribes 
which remained without their" inheritance, were chosen 
by the public voice. At a later period in the history 
of the Republic "the people made Jephtha head and 
captain over them." With all this array of facts, 
who is so skeptical as to doubt that this was a gov- 
ernment by the people, like our own? 

5. They had an independent judiciary, for the 
prompt, and equal, and exact administration of justice 
between man and man. The fundamental law upon 
this subject was, "judges and officers shalt thou make 
thee in all thy gates;" that is, in all thy towns and 
cities. On assuming their duties, they were solemnly 
charged to "judge the people with just judgment;" 
they were not to " wrest judgment, nor respect per- 
sons, nor take bribes," but to "follow that which 
was altogether just." Deut. xvi, 18-20. All cases 
which were too hard for these lower courts were 
carried up to the chief magistrate. "The cause 
which is too hard for you," said Moses, "bring it 
unto me, and I will hear it." Deut. i, 17. This 
latter constituted tlie supreme federal court. 

Here, then, was a federal and state judiciary. To 
this department the people of the Hebrew Common- 
wealth committed the high functions of interpreting 



46 THE AMEEICAN REPUBLIC. 

and applying the laws of the land. Like Israel, we 
have our judicial system ^'to establish justice." This 
system, hke that of the Hebrews, is the guardian of 
our laws. Like the Hebrew, we resort to it, in all 
cases of doubt or controversy, as the final arbiter of 
our rights; and upon its decisions hang our lives, 
liberty, and property. In the last chapter of Num- 
bers is a right- of-pr op erty case of great importance 
submitted to the supreme court of the Hebrews, in 
which the admirable judicial wisdom and far-reaching 
scrutiny of the court are made manifest. In the 
practice of these courts is found the refinement of 
legal principles, or, in the language of Lord Coke, 
that oracle of the English law — ''principles fined and 
refined to the perfection of reason." 

6. Law of evidence. It was ordained in these 
courts as a rule of evidence, now held as most right- 
eous and humane among all civilized nations, that 
sentence of death even for murder should not be 
pronounced against the accused upon the uncorrob- 
orated testimony of a single witness. Here is the 
law: "Whoso killeth any person, the murderer shall 
be put to death by the mouth of witnesses: but one 
witness shall not testify against any person to cause 
him to die." Numbers xxxv, 30. 

7. Trial hy jury. The origin of this bulwark of 
our free institutions has greatly perplexed the anti- 
quarian researches of wTiters on the common law. 
They have traced its rudiments among the civil insti- 
tutions of the Saxons, and Danes, and other nations 



THE HEBREW COMMONWEALTH. 47 

of Northern Europe, whence Great Britam was neces- 
sarily peopled, yet always ending their researches in 
the most remote antiquity. But when it is consid- 
ered that in the Hebrew polity it was most solemnly 
ordained that, in cases of trial for homicide, "the 
congregation shall judge between the slayer and 
avenger of blood, according to the judgment," Numb. 
XXXV, 24 — mark, not of the magistrate ; but the 
people, the panel of the country, should determine 
according to the law — what was this but ''trial by 
jury?" Here, then, undouUedlij was the origin of 
that safeguard of our civil liberties. It is reasonable 
to suppose that in process of time, when the congre- 
gation became unwieldy, each tribe would send one 
to represent it, and that here is the origin of the 
present number twelve. 

They had a national Congress which was purely 
democratic; but as the constitution embraced a per- 
fect code of laws, they were not called together 
except on extraordinary occasions. The Senate was 
composed of seventy-two members, and the House, 
of the congregation of Israel. 

We find in the Hebrew Commonwealth a system 
of education by which all the children were edu- 
cated. The government being republican made it 
necessary that the body of the people should be 
intelligent; hence a system was originated by God 
to meet this demand. Under it the people were 
trained up and educated to understand their privi- 
leges, to appreciate their responsibilities, and dis- 



48 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

charge their duties. It was made the duty of 
parents to teach their children the statutes and ordi- 
nances which God had revealed. The following was 
the statute upon this subject: "And thou shalt teach 
them diligently unto thy children." Deut. vi, 7. 
This was to be done, first, orally. " Thou shalt talk 
of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when 
thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, 
and when thou risest up." Deut. vi, 7. This oral 
instruction was undoubtedly to be given the child 
when too young to receive it from books. When the 
child grew older, it was to receive written instruc- 
tion. "And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon 
thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between 
thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts 
of thy house, and on thy gates." Deut. vi, 8. This 
mode of teaching is in harmony with the views of the 
best educators of our own time. No child should be 
required to learn from books till after they are seven 
years of age ; all instruction before that time should 
be oral. 

It is doubtful whether any nation has ever existed 
in which the rudiments of education were so uni- 
versally taught as in that of the Hebrew. Of the 
truth of this we have abundant evidence in the time 
of the Savior. In his appeals to the common people 
we find the frequent use of such words as these : 
"Have ye not read what David did?" Matt, xii, 3. 
"Have ye never read. Out of the mouth of babes 
and sucklings thou hast perfected praise?" Matt. 



THE HEBREW COMMONWEALTH. 49 

xxi, 16. " Have ye not read that which was spoken 
unto you by God, saying?" Matt, xxii, 31. These 
frequent references to the truths written in the Old 
Testament Scriptures, show that the common people 
were familiar with them. At the time of the cruci- 
fixion of Christ, the title placed upon the cross by 
Pilate was '^read by many of the Jews." John 
xix, 20. Jewish writers testify that the ''school was 
to be found in every district throughout the nation, 
which was under the care of teachers, who were 
honored alike for their character and their station." 
Josephus affirms, "that if any one asked any of 
his countrymen about their laws, they would as 
readily tell them all as tell their own names." The 
Hebrews had their higher institutions of learning. 
These higher seminaries were known as the "schools 
of the prophets." These colleges, like those of our 
own day in the United States, were under the care 
of men distinguished for their attainments, standing, 
and ability. Here were studied the Jewish law, and 
other branches of learning, peculiar to that age. 
Such was the educational system of the Hebrews — 
a system which fitted the masses for citizenship in 
the Republic, and produced a literature and scholar- 
ship which have not been surpassed in any age. 

Our own system resembles that of the Hebrews in 
its leading features. Our common school system, 
which we prize so highly, is purely American in its 
origin. It was among the Puritan colonies of New 
England, only twenty-two years after the Bible- 



50 THE a:mericax republic. 

freighted Mayflower anchored at Plymouth Rock, that 
it first looked forth upon the receding darkness of 
the New World. The statute upon this subject, at 
the time referred to, 1642, is as follows: "None of 
the brethren shall suffer so much barbarism in their 
families as not to teach theh childi^en and appren- 
tices so much as to enaLle them perfectly to read the 
English tongue.'" 

In 1647, five years after the time of the first 
statute, it was ordained, "that in every township, 
after the Lord hath increased the number of house- 
holders to fifty, they shall aj)j)oint one to teach all 
the childi-en to read and write, and when he hath 
increased the number to one hundred, a grammar 
school shall be established." At this early day, one 
hundi'ed and twenty-nine years before the Declara- 
tion of Independence, was recognized the great prin- 
ciple that it is the duty of the State to educate all 
the childi^en. This system did much to prepare the 
Colonies for independence, and, hke that of the He- 
brew system, it is of vital importance to the per- 
petuity of our republican government. "It is the 
factory," said an American divine, "in which we fit 
for citizenship the youth of our country." Lord 
Macaulay, in 1847, in plea on the subject of educa- 
tion in the House of Commons, thus alludes to our 
educational system: "And what do we find to be 
the principle of America and all the greatest men 
she has produced upon this question? They pledged 
themselves to this principle, that education was a 



THE HEBREW COMMONWEALTH. 51 

matter of the deepest possible importance and the 
greatest possible interest to all nations and all com- 
munities, and that as such it was in an eminent 
degree deserving the peculiar attention of the State." 
"Educate the people" was the first admonition ad- 
dressed by Penn to the Commonwealth he founded. 
"Educate the people" was the last legacy left by 
Wasliington to the Republic of the United States. 
"Educate the people" was the unceasing exhortation 
of Jefferson. 

What the number of schools among the Hebrews 
was we do not know ; they must have been numerous, 
however, as they had one in every district. There 
are at this time in the United States about 90,000 
free-schools, in which there are 5,000,000 children, 
instructed by about 100,000 teachers. In New En- 
gland, where the system originated, and where it has 
been thoroughly matured, there is only one person 
over the age o'f twenty in every three hundred unable 
to read and write; while in South Carolina, the hot- 
bed of treason, the proportion is one out of every 
three. Note the difference between three and three 
hundred ! 

Such was the Hebrew system of education, the 
first that ever existed among men for the education 
of all the people in the State; and such is our own, 
which, like the prototype, provides for the education 
of all the childi'en in the State. The Hebrew system 
having been instituted by God himself, we see the 
importance which he attaches to universal education; 



52 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

and we see, too, tlie kind of system whicli, according 
to the Divine estimate, is adapted to a republican 
government. Let us not forget, then, Avhen we are 
putting forth efforts to sustain our free-schools, we 
are doing the Divine will, and contributing to the 
perpetuity of our free institutions. 

We have thus, at some length, given the leading 
features of the Hebrew Commonwealth — a State with- 
out an aristocracy, without a nobility, and without a 
king. How perfect the resemblance betvfeen the type 
and the antitype! Who will question, in the light 
of all these facts, that the United States of Israel 
was a type of the United States of America? 



EESTORED NATION OF PROPHECY. 53 



CHAPTER III. 

THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC THE RESTORED NATION 
OF PROPHECY. 

As the United States is the nation typified by the 
Hebrew Commonwealth in a manner not unlike that 
in which the Christian Church was typified by the 
Jewish Church, so the nation, like the Church, is a 
subject of prophecy, constituting one of the grand 
themes around which the prophets threw the beams 
of their united light. They predict its rise, its rapid 
progress, and its wide-spread dominion. 

This statement, we doubt not, will strike the reader 
as novel, for the reason that we have been accus- 
tomed to seeing all other countries except our own 
included in the geographic map of the expositors of 
prophecy. It does not seem to have occurred to these 
interpreters of the prophecies that the very nature 
of prophecy forbids such an omission. Prophecy is 
God's programme of this world's events; it is God's 
stupendous world-plan of future events such as no 
human wisdom or forecast is able to make. This 
wonderful plan commences with the fall of man in 
Eden and extends to the recovery of man in heaven. 
During the progress of more than four thousand years 



54^ THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

it was continually opening, while each new prediction 
added another link to the prophetic chain. Its voice 
was first heard by our fallen parents on the eve of 
their expulsion from the garden of innocence. It 
admonished Cain of his merited punishment; Enoch 
and Noah transmitted its sublime strains ; Abraham 
heard its voice divine, and by its impressive inspira- 
tions was guided and encouraged through his whole 
life; Isaac was emphatically the child as well as the 
instrument of prophetic communication; Jacob, in 
life's last hour, foretold with perfect accuracy the 
history of his twelve sons in their generations, and 
the reign of a lawgiver in Judah till Shiloh should 
come. 

During the Captivity of Jacob's posterity in Egypt 
the harp of prophecy remained silent ; but no sooner 
was Israel free than the Spirit again breathed upon 
its strings, and, in the hand of Moses, it spoke of 
the great Prophet who was to come to the Church, 
and sketched the Jewish history, with wonderful mi- 
nuteness, down even to the present, and unto far 
future times. Samuel, and David, and the honored 
Elijah, and the man of God, Elisha, Hosea, Amos, 
and Micah were of the same school. Then followed 
Isaiah, as full of the spirit of the Gospel as of the 
spirit of prophecy ; and Jeremiah, with his tender 
lamentation, and Ezekiel, with his many visions. 
Then came Daniel, the statesman of Chaldea and 
prophet of God, who pointed out the four great mon- 
archies of the world, to be followed by a fifth power, 



RESTORED NATION OF PROniECY. 55 

a Republic which should bcconie world-wide and stand 
forever. Haggai and Zechariah continued the strain. 
Malachi terminated the line of the Old-Testament 
prophets, and the canon of the Old-Testament Scrip- 
tures, with the sublime annunciation of one who was 
to come, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to prepare 
the way of the Lord. 

Again, the harp of prophecy was silent till the 
great Prophet arose, who was himself the object of 
prophecy from the beginning. Paul followed his Di- 
vine Master, and foretold the coming of " that man 
of sin, the son of perdition." The beloved disciple 
John closed the lengthened and mysterious pro- 
gramme by the utterance of predictions the awful 
sublimity of which no pen can rival, and the wonder- 
ful expanse of which nothing but the events of all 
future time can measure. 

Here, then, we have a long list of "holy men of 
God, who wrote and spoke as they were moved by 
the Holy Ghost." Thus did Jehovah, from time to 
time, as was needful to mankind, make known the 
world's coming events. This plan extends through all 
time, and embraces not only the history of God's ancient 
people, but of all other nations which have existed, 
or may exist, to the end of time. How vast, how 
sublime, how wonderful the plan ! " So vast as to 
embrace all time, and yet so minute that it details 
the events of an hour; so general, tliat, in a few 
lines, it predicts the history of the four mightiest 
empires, and yet so particular that chapters are de- 



56 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

voted to the history of one individual ; so diversified 
in its materials as to be made up of contributions 
of men from all ages and minds during a period of 
more than four thousand years ; and yet so identical 
that one spirit and one grand, harmonious purpose 
animates the whole." Here is a grandeur of concep- 
tion, a sublimity of design, an all- controlling power 
of execution, a unity and self-depending supremacy 
of mind, which bespeak the omniscience aiid omnipo- 
tence of Him "-who was, and is, and is to come, the 
Almighty .^^ 

Such being the prophetic scheme, it is absolutely 
impossible that the United States of America should 
be left out. It is as necessary to the completion of 
the programme as the part is to the completion of 
the whole. Considering the nature of prophecy, we 
should as soon expect the omission of the Church of 
Christ, as the omission of the Republic of the United 
States. 

We are inclined to believe that the reason why the 
expositors of the prophecies, heretofore, have failed 
to see any thing in the prophets relative to the 
United States, has grown out of a mistaken view of 
the nature and design of the civil polity of the Jews. 
Let it once be admitted that the Hebrew theocracy 
was a prototype of a government which should rise 
in the last time, as the Hebrew Church was a proto- 
type of the Christian Church, and you will as much 
expect to find the coming nation in prophecy as the 
coming Church. 



RESTORED NATION OE PROPHECY. 57 

This want of a correct understanding of the nature 
and design of Hebrew civil polity has led to a wrong 
view of the Jewish people as a nation. The very 
prophecies, which clearly and unmistakably point out 
the United States as the restored Israel, have been 
claimed as teaching the "restoration of the Jews to 
Palestine." This is a favorite theory, both with Jews 
and Christians. It is claimed that the former occu- 
pancy of that land by the Jews was an earnest that 
they should occupy it again in the latter days. The 
author of "Israel Restored" affirms that the original 
possession of the land of Canaan by the seed of 
Jacob was only a token and pledge of a more glorious 
occupation of the land hereafter to be enjoyed by 
them. It is also claimed that this glorious occupa- 
tion is to be followed by a more glorious celebration 
of the Old-Testament worship. The old economy is 
to be established, by which they formerly held pos- 
session of Canaan. The Temple is to be rebuilt, 
the Levitical priesthood and sacrifices are to be re- 
stored, with the service generally, which were or- 
dained by the law of Moses. All tliis is contended 
for by most of those who hold this view, both in this 
country and in Europe. Fry, in his Unfulfilled 
Prophecy, says : " God ordained sacrifice to be ob- 
served by the circumcision till the covenant made 
with the circumcision shall cease ; and as this law 
has never been abrogated, it is not unreasonable to 
suppose that sacrifices might now be employed as 
spiritual acts of worship by the Jews." "It is very 



58 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 



evident that the holy ceremonial of religious worship, 
to be established at Jerusalem and Mt. Zion, is to 
resemble more the former service of the tabernacle 
than the solemnities of the Christian worship, and 
that it is to be for all the remnants of the nations 
that are spread over all the earth. There is to be 
but one holy mountain and one temple." 

Such are some of the views relative to the restora- 
tion of the Jews. It is against the very nature of 
predictions of this sort, as determined by the history 
of previous fulfillment, to make an event foreshadow 
itself — to make one occupation of the land of Canaan 
the type of another and future occupation of it. 
This does not harmonize with the law of the type 
which foreshadows a truth, on a lower platform, which 
is to appear on a higher. 

As to the views here advanced relative to the Old- 
Testament w^orship, it is in direct contradiction of the 
teachings of Christ and his apostles. The Savior 
said to the woman of Samaria, ''the hour cometh 
when neither in this mountain, nor yet in Jerusalem, 
shall men worship the Father;" that is, manifestly, 
shall not worship Him there peculiarly; these places 
shall possess no distinctive privileges. We are told, 
that among the benefits procured for the Church, by 
the death of Christ, was the abolition of the hand- 
writing of ordinances. But these views are so 
directly in contradiction of the plain teachings of the 
Word of God, that we do not deem it of sufficient 
importance to pursue it further. 



RESTORED NATION OF PROPHECY. 50 

That the Jews will, finally, be converted to the 
Christian religion, we believe; but we do not believe 
that they will be gathered out of all nations to the 
land of Judea, and constitute the promised national- 
ity. It is a well-known fact that the Jews, because 
of their unbelief, were not constituted the Church of 
Christ. As a people, they rejected the Savior, and 
put him to death. Now, that same unbelief which 
disqualified them for membership in the Church, 
would unfit them for citizenship in the Christian na- 
tionality. And as God rejected them w^hen consti- 
tuting the Church, because of their unbelief, so he 
would not have them as the people who should con- 
stitute the great model nation. This promised nation 
was to be to the Church of God, under the new dispen- 
sation, what the Hebrew nation was to the Church 
under the old dispensation. It must, therefore, be a 
Christian nation, and hence can not be a restoration 
of the Jews. 

It is important to remark, in this connection, that 
the prophets, in speaking of the Church, made use 
of terms then familiar to the people. The Church 
was not called the Church of Christ, or the Christian 
Church; it was called " Zion," ''the mountain of the 
Lord's house." So, too, when the nation is pointed 
out, it is not called the Republic, or the United 
States — it is called " Israel." The name Israel was a 
name of honor, and not the natural right of a Jew. 
God gave the appellation to Jacob, " because as a 
prince he prevailed with God." While the childrcs 



60 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

of Jacob maintained their integrity, they enjoyed 
this high distinction; but St. Paul defends the appli- 
cation of the term to Gentiles, who may possess the 
proper claims to this honor. 

Only strip the subject of its Jewish robes, and the 
symmetrical proportions and sublimity of Christian 
republicanism are as perfectly delineated as a Grecian 
pillar. But we will now show that what is reason- 
able and legitimate is a true principle of interpreta- 
tion, being authorized by the great Teacher from 
heaven. Said the disciples to our Lord, ^'Why say 
the scribes that Elias must first come?" for it is 
written, " Behold I will send Elijah the prophet be- 
fore that great and notable day of the Lord." Jesus 
answered and said : " Elias is come already, and they 
knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever 
they listed." Then the disciples understood that he 
spoke unto them of John the Baptist. Now, sup- 
pose it be asked by what construction of language 
we make out John the Baptist to be Elias the 
prophet, which was for to come, seeing he is another 
man altogether. Our Lord answers the question: 
" John was the Elias which Avas for to come ;" not be- 
cause that was the name by which he was called, but 
because he came "in the spirit and power of Elias," 
thereby answering the moral portrait drawn by the 
pencil of inspiration, and was consequently declared 
by the Savior to be indeed the Elias. If, therefore, 
a great nationality is promised to arise in the latter 
days, and the United States of America exhibits the 



RESTORED NATION OF PROPHECY. 61 

character of such liatTonalitj, as delineated by the 
pen of prophecy, arising "in the spirit and power" 
of Israel to come ; and no other nation under heaven 
ever has answered, or ever can answer the description, 
then perfect coincidence being perfect fulfillment, our 
glorious Republic is the nationality which was to be 
gathered together in the latter times, under the pro- 
phetic name of Israel. 

We pass now to those minute descriptions given by 
the prophets relative to the promised nationality. 
These descriptions are so accurate and full that their 
meaning and proper application can not w^ell be mis- 
taken. 

1. The prophet gives us the geographical boundary 
of the promised nationality. It was to be located 
between two seas, the eastern sea and the great west- 
ern sea. " From the border unto the east sea : this is 

the east side The west side also shall be the 

great sea from the border: this is the west side." 
Ezek. xlvii, 18, 20. Such are the broad boundaries 
given by the prophet of the restored Israel. It is a 
mapping out of the country of the promised nation- 
ality, under Divine inspiration. This description can 
not apply to • Judea, which is not bounded on the 
east side by a sea at all. This question of boundary 
has greatly perplexed the learned who have applied 
the text to the restoration of the Jews in Palestine. 

2. The country is represented as having been un- 
cultivated previous to its occupancy by the new or 
restored nationality. " After many days thou slialt 



62 THE AMEEICAN REPUBLIC. 

be visited; in the latter years thou shalt come into 
the land that is brought back from the sword and is 
gathered out of many people, against the mountains 
of Israel, which have been always wasted' Ezek. 
xxxviii, 8. This description can not apply to Pales- 
tine, for it has not been '' always tuaste.^' But our 
own country answers fully to the description. God 
seems to have kept the New World, with its vast 
forests and grand prairies, as the place of his Chris- 
tian Israel. Here for ages the wilderness remained 
unbroken; kings and kingdoms rose and fell in other 
portions of the world, while Jehovah, in his mys- 
terious providence, was preparing the w^ay for the 
coming nation, w^hich was not to grow up upon the 
ruins of another, but was to receive its birth outside 
of all other nations, to grow up where monarchy had 
never cast its dark shadow as an occupant of the 
country. 

We can not but regard the providence of God 
touching this matter as worthy of special considera- 
tion. Geologically, the New World is the older of 
the two. Why, then, was it not chosen as the dwell- 
ing-place of the race in the early ages ? Why was 
the ''first last and the last first" in this respect? 

Was it not because of the remarkable adaptation 
of this country to the establishment of a great free 
nation? Look at its vastness, embracing all the 
climes, fertilities of soil, mineral resources, beautiful 
varieties of surface and natural conveniences, desira- 
ble for the habitation of one of the greatest people 



RESTORED NATION OF PROPHECY. 63 

upon earth. Such wa^s the b6auty and grandeur of 
the wikierness before the hand of civilization broke 
its sohtude and made it the abode of happy mill- 
ions. We are forcibly reminded of the language of 
Isaiah, which may apply very appropriately to our 
own country. ''The wilderness and the solitary 
place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall re- 
joice and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom 
abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing; 
the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the ex- 
cellency of Carmel and Sharon : they shall see the glory 
of the Lord, and the excellency of our God. . . . For 
in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams 
in the desert. And the parched ground shall become 
a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water ; in the 
habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass 
with reeds and rushes." 

3. The country of restored Israel was to be a place 
of spacious rivers. " But there the glorious Lord will 
be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams; 
wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither shall 
gallant ship pass thereby." Isaiah xxxiii, 21. Here 
God promises to the nation whom he would raise up 
a land of numerous rivers and streams. This can 
not apply to Palestine with its single river and two 
or three small brooks. Admitting this to be the land 
there is no chfficulty. The Mississippi River has fifty 
navigable tributaries, saying nothing of the other 
great rivers in the land. This is literally a country 
of "broad rivers and streams." The Hebrew word, 



64 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

translated " galley," literally signifies a government 
clipper sent out by a superior kingdom to exact port 
dues from a dependent people. We have a beautiful 
illustration of tbis in our early history, in the case 
of the tea cargo in Boston harbor. That was a most 
momentous event, and worthy of being suggested or 
pointed to by the ancient seer. In the time of An- 
drew Jackson the very genius of our independence is 
said to have been stamped upon a medal: ^^ Millions 
for defense, hut not one cent for tribute." 

4. This promised nationality was to be inhabited 
by a people "gathered out of all nations;" not of 
one nation collected together that had been scattered 
among other nations, but, what is obviously the sense 
of the passage, composed of people of different na- 
tions. Now, if it were a ''restoration of the Jews," 
it would be composed of Jews only. This passage, 
then, can not apply to the Jews, while the complexion 
of our own people answers to this prophecy exactly. 
Our nation is made up of all peoples, and kindred, 
and tongues, and nations under heaven. God, in the 
beginning, "sifted the wheat out of three" of the 
leading "nations" of the world ".with which to sow 
this virgin soil." 

The prophet seems to point out the coming nation- 
ality as the place of the gathering of multitudes from 
all lands : " Lift up thine eyes round about thee and 
see: all they gather themselves together, they come 
to thee." Isaiah Ix, 4. And the same prophet else- 
where exclaims: "Behold, these shall come from far; 



RESTORED NATION OF PROPHECY. 65 

and lo, these from the north and from the west; and 
these from the land of Sinim." Isaiah xlix, 12. This 
passage from Isaiah is very remarkable. It repre- 
sents emigration from the land of " Sinim," which is 
China, according to the opinions of all commentators. 
It enters the promised nation from the north-west. 
How could this apply to Palestine? It is impossible 
that these Asiatics should come into Palestine from 
that direction. But China is north-west from the 
United States. The passage describes what has been 
going on in California for several years past, where 
from China, the land of "Sinim," multitudes have 
come. 

It was the privilege of the writer to spend nearly 
ten years in that beautiful country, and witness this 
tide of " Celestials " which poured into the country 
from the "land of Sinim." Efforts, by legislation, 
were made to prevent this influx into the land of 
gold, but all to no purpose. On they came, and are 
coming still, in accordance with the prophecy, despite 
all opposition. It is not an uncommon thing, on the 
Pacific coast, to see representatives from almost every 
prominent nation on the globe, in a single congrega- 
tion, assembled on the Lord's day for divine service. 
This mingling of nations impresses the mind of the 
thoughtful with peculiar force, and brings to recol- 
lection the numerous prophecies which undoubtedly 
allude to it. 

Ever since this nation had an existence there has 

been a constant tide of life pouring in from the Old 

6 



66 THE AMERICAN EEPUBLIC. 

World, and it does not seem to be checked by our 
present war. Last year one hundred and sixty thou- 
sand immigrants came to our shores, and it is esti- 
mated that the number this year will reach two hundred 
and fifty thousand. There is no other land in the 
world where the attractions to the citizens of other 
countries are so great; and there is no other to which 
these striking prophecies can apply. How long would 
Palestine, which is one hundred and eighty miles long, 
and ninety in width in the south, and forty-three in 
the north, sustain such an immigration as that of 
which these prophets speak, particularly after gath- 
ering the Jews together there? But admit that the 
United States is the promised nation, and all obscurity 
and difficulty at once vanishes, and the whole subject 
glows in the light of a perfect fulfillment. 

The prophet enters into details which have peculiar 
force : '' Strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, 
and the sons of the alien shall be your plowmen and 
your vine-dressers." This is literally true, and never 
more so than at the present writing. How common 
it is for us to employ the German or Frenchman to 
prune our vines! These foreigners were to have a 
dwelling-place in the promised nation, and become 
naturalized citizens, and owners of the soil in com- 
mon with the citizens of the country. "And it shall 
come to pass that ye shall divide it by lot for an 
inheritance unto you, and to the strangers that so- 
journ among you: and they shall be unto you as 
born in the country among the children of Israel; 



RESTORED NATION OF PROPHECY. 67 

they shall have inheritance with you among the tribes 
of Israel. And in what tribe the stranger sojourn- 
eth, there shall ye give h\n\ his inheritance, saith the 
Lord God." Ezek. xlvii, 22, 2o. Our Government 
gives to every man v.ho -\vi]l accept it, and comply 
with the terms, a home. Thus do we "divide" the 
American "inheritance" by lot. 

Admit that the United States is the restored nation 
of prophecy, and these predictions have a perfect 
fulfillment in the facts which transpire in the country 
every year. Here the alien becomes a naturalized 
citizen, and as such enjoys all the rights and priv- 
ileges of the native-born citizen. He has his inherit- 
ance in the land, exercises the right of suffrage, and 
is eligible to office, and is frequently elevated to 
positions of trust and power by the people. 

Now, admitting Palestine to be the land referred 
to by the prophet, how are these multitudes of which 
the prophet speaks to get a home in that land after 
the Jews are supplied? Remember that the land is 
only a fraction more than one-fourth the size of the 
State of Ohio. 

5. The promised nationality was to be a republic, 
or representative government. "Their nobles shall 
be of themselves, and their governor shall proceed 
from the midst of them." Jer. xxx, 21. The peo- 
ple shall be "gathered together and appoint unto 
themselves one head." Hosea i, 11. "I will restore 
thy judges as at the first, and thy counselors as at 
the beginning." Isaiah i, 26. In a previous chapter 



68 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

we showed the typical character of the Hebrew Gov- 
ernment, with the evidence that, it was a type of our 
own Government. Here the prophet declares that in 
the restored, or Christian Israel, there should be a 
head, a chief magistrate, appointed by the people from 
among themselves, but nothing is said of a king. 
The antitype, in this respect, was to be like the type, 
a pure republic, with such changes as the higher 
forms of Christian civilization should require. How 
perfect the fulfillment in these particulars! Our own 
Government, in its leading features, is a perfect like- 
ness of the Hebrew prototype, with additions adapted 
to the age. 

6. The nation of a restored Israel, like its proto- 
type, was to be distinguished for the rapid advance- 
ment of intelligence and divine instruction, which 
should mark the rising progress of the people. 

" Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall 
be increased." " All thy children shall be taught of 
the Lord, and great shall be the peace of thy chil- 
dren." We have shown in a former chapter that 
these passages were characteristic of our own age. 
They have, however, a special application to this 
country. Out of eight thousand, five hundred and 
lorty-two periodicals published in all the world, nearly 
one-half, or three thousand, two hundred, are published 
in the United States. The largest circulation any 
secular paper has, outside of the United States, is 
fifty thousand, while the largest circulation of a sim- 
ilar naner, in this country, is nearly three times that 



RESTORED NATION OF PROPHECY. 69 

number, and some of our religious papers have a cir- 
culation of more than two hundred thousand. Look 
at our common schools, in which more than a hund- 
red thousand teachers toil in the work of instructing 
five millions of children. Add to this our Sunday- 
schools, with their vast circulating libraries, fitted 
especially for the youthful mind; the seminaries, col- 
leges, and universities; the number of Christian 
families, in which instruction is given on the great 
truths of Christianity; the Churches, with their free 
pulpits, and faithful ministers, and hosts of godly 
men and women, engaged in various ways to spread 
the light; the Bible Society, by which the Word of 
Life is placed in every family in the land; the tract 
enterprise, by which messages of Divine truth are 
given to the busy millions. All these, and more, 
constitute the aggregate mental and moral force, by 
which, in this rising Republic of the world, knowl- 
edge is increased. Heretofore there were barriers in 
the way of the free circulation of the light, but God 
is, in his own way, removing them, so that these 
agencies shall pour their floods of light through every 
portion of the Republic. 

Great indeed are the privileges of the denizens of 
this free Republic. They are not equaled in any 
other nation. " Happy art thou, Israel ; who is 
like unto thee, people, raised by the Lord, the 
shield of thy help, and who is the sword of thy ex- 
cellency." 



70 THE AMERICAN EEPUBLIC. 



CHAPTEH IV. 

THE AMERICAN KEPUBLIC THE ISTATION BORN IN 
A DAY. 

The prophet Isaiah declared that the time should 
come when a nation should be born in a day. ^'Be- 
fore she travailed she brought forth; before her pain 
came she was delivered of a man child. Who hath 
heard such things? who hath seen such things? shall 
the earth be made to bring forth in one day ? or shall 
a nation be born at once?" Isaiah Ixvi, 7, 8. This 
passage has generally been interpreted to mean that, 
in the '^ last time," the aggressive power of the 
Church should become so great that a whole nation 
should be converted to Christianity in a single day. 
This can not be the meaning of this passage, for the 
reason that no such thing as the conversion of a 
"nation in a day has occurred up to the present time. 
And no such event can take place hereafter, for the 
reason that there is no nation that has not already 
been visited by the Gospel of Christ, and a part of 
the nation already conquered to Immanuel, thus 
leaving it impossible that a whole "nation should be 
born in a day." The birth spoken of is not a spir- 
itual birth, but a civil birth: a nation which did not 



THE NATION BOilN IN A DAY. 71 

before exist was in a single day to come into being; 
that is the plain teaching of the text. This civil 
power was to be the offspring of the Church, and 
therefore a Christian nation; that this event should 
be a new thing which had not been heard of nor seen 
among men. 

Now, we ask, has any thing transpired since the 
uttering of the prediction which harmonizes with- it? 
To this question there is an affirmative answer. The 
United States of America was born in one day ; that 
day was July the fourth, seventeen hundred and sev- 
enty-six, a day memorable in American history as the 
nation's birthday. As such it has been observed by 
the people ever since the year that the new-born 
nation first looked forth upon the breaking light of 
the New World. No other nation was ever thus born 
in a day ; hence no nation except the United States 
celebrates a birthday. 

This was a new thing under the sun. It was to 
the Christian dispensation, in this respect, what the 
Hebrew Government was to the Jewish dispensation. 
When God planted that republic the following inter- 
rogatory was propounded relative to it: "For ask 
now of the days that are passed, which were before 
thee, since the day that God created man upon earth, 
and ask from one side of heaven to the other, whether 
there hath been any such thing as this great thing is, 
or hath been heard like it?" Deut. iv, 32. There 
were peculiarities characterizing the Hebrew Govern- 
ment which had no resemblance in the governments 



72 THE AMEHICAN REPUBLIC. 

of that or any preceding age, so that "there had been 
no such thing as that great thing was, nor had been 
heard like it." Now, as the Hebrew State had no 
likeness in any of the preceding governments, and 
was therefore a new thing under the sun, so the 
United States, the nation born of the Church, born at 
once, born in a day, had nothing in these character- 
istics in any former government like it, so that the 
prophet might Well ask, "Who hath heard such a 
thing? who hath seen such a thing?'' In these two 
facts — of being born at once, and in being the off- 
spring of the Church — the United States was to stand 
out in the world's history alone. Other nations had 
risen upon the ruins of those which had preceded 
them, but the United States was to be the offspring 
of Christianity, a nation " born at once." 

The time of the nation^s hirth. Daniel points out 
the time when there should arise a great nationality; 
when the "power of the holy people," or friends of 
civil and religious liberty, should "cease to be scat- 
tered;" vfhen, by affinity, they should be drawn to- 
gether. This was to take place at "the time of the 
end." This "time of the end" was the end of the 
seal placed upon those prophecies relating to the rise 
of the new nation, or the United States. The predic- 
tions of the Bible touching the nations, down to the 
destruction of the Jewish capital, are but a literal 
history of those countries. Here all is plain and self- 
evident, as time has witnessed the fulfillment. But 
from that memorable event — the downfall of Jeru- 



THE NATION BORN IN A DAY. 73 

salem — on to a certain chronological event called 
" the time of the end^'' all is uncertainty. No inter- 
pretation breaks the seal of its wonders, clouds cur- 
tain the heavens ; and the syrabols that glow in the 
visions of God's holy prophets are alike mysterious 
to them and the wondering seraph. 

To Daniel, the prince of the prophets, this great 
truth seemed first to have been announced. When 
the prophet had the stupendous visions covering that 
symbolic period, he exclaimed : " I heard, but I un- 
derstood not : then said I, my Lord, what shall be 
the end of these wonders? And he said. Go thy 
way, Daniel ; for the ivords are closed up and sealed 
till the time of the end.^^ Dan. xii, 8, 9. This posi- 
tive declaration of Jehovah was thrice repeated to the 
prophet. But Gabriel gives him to understand, per- 
sonally, thus much: These wonders will not occur in 
your day, Daniel ; you will rest with your fathers 
long before the seal shall be broken ; nevertheless, 
you will arise in the resurrection of the just; there- 
fore, go thy way and be ^comforted with the blessed 
hope. Such we suppose to be the meaning of the 
angel Vv'hen, closing his sublime mission to the prophet, 
he said: "But go thy way till the end be; for thou 
shalt rest and stand in thy lot at the end of the 
days." Dan. xii, 13. 

As the visions of Daniel, that covered the lapse of 
ages to the time of the end, were sealed and closed up, 
we must infer that the visions of Isaiah and Ezekicl, 

of Jeremiah and John, embracing the same subjects 

7 



74 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

and measuring the same period, were interdicted also. 
This, indeed, is a legitimate and necessary deduction. 

This dim seal upon these prophecies made it im- 
possible that they should be understood till the un- 
sealing of the mystic vision at the appointed time, 
called the ^^time of the end.'' Hence the numerous 
failures on the part of the long catalogue of learned 
expositors, who, previous to that time, made the at- 
tempt. 

But how are we to determine the period or age 
called the "time of the end?" The prophet answers 
the question. It was to be an age of great and rapid 
locomotion and general intelligence. The prophet's 
language is : " Many shall run to and fro, and knowl- 
edge shall be increased." Dan. xii, 4. 

Our own age answers to this description of the 
"time of the end," and no other period since the 
sealing of the vision, except that of our own free na- 
tion, harmonizes with the prediction. Ours is an 
age of unequaled activity and of great energy — an age 
of thought. Men think for^ themselves, and think on 
all subjects freely and fearlessly. It is an age of in- 
vention — time-saving, labor-saving, expense-saving in- 
ventions are patented by the thousand, while the toils 
of humanity are thereby lessened, and greater facili- 
ties are afforded for mental and moral culture. One 
man, we are told, can, by the aid of machinery, spin 
as much cotton in a day as twenty-five thousand men 
could, in the same length of time, by the old system. 

Similar triumphs have crowned the efforts of mind 



THE NATION BORN IN A DAY. 75 

in the various departments of literature and the fine 
arts. Some one has said that the best criterion for 
estimating the intelhgence and tastes of a nation is 
the extent and character of its periodical literature. 
Comparing our own age with all preceding ones, and 
judging of it by this rule, it has had no parallel in 
the world's history. Previous to the dawn of the 
new era of 1776, there were only thirty-seven period- 
icals published within the limits of the United States, 
while to-day there are three thousand, two hundred, 
making the entire circulation in the United States, 
the present year, more than one billion, which is 
twice as great as that of all the rest of the world. 
England and Wales have four hundred and eighty- 
eight periodicals ; Ireland, one hundred and eleven ; 
Scotland, one hundred and twelve ; France, one thou- 
sand, four hundred; Prussia, six hundred and thirty- 
two; Austria, seventy-three; Saxony, one hundred 
and eighty-three ; other German States, five hundred 
and eighty ; Switzerland, seventy-seven ; Italy, one 
hundred and fifty ; Turkey, one hundi*ed and thirty ; 
Sweden and Norway, one hundred and thirteen ; 
Asia, exclusive of Turkey, three hundred; Africa, 
forty ; Holland, one hundred and sixty-eight ; Bel- 
gium, eighty-six ; Spain, sixty ; Portugal, twelve ; 
Greece, one hundred and ten ; Denmark, tliirty-nine ; 
Mexico, thirty ; Russia, sixty-three ; Central America, 
three ; New Grenada, forty-eight ; Equador, three ; 
Venezuela, three ; Guiana, six ; Brazil, thirty-two ; 
Paraguay, two ; Uruguay, four ; Buenos Ayres, ten ; 



76 THE AMERICAN .REPUBLIC. 

Chili, twenty-four ; Bolivia, two ; Peru, tAventj- seven ; 
Spanish West Indies, ten; British West Indies, six- 
teen; British America, one hundred and sixty. We 
have thus presented in detail the evidence by which 
we are able to judge of the intelligence of the present 
age throughout a large portion of the globe. 

A showing equally favorable might be made of the 
schools of the world. To the United States belongs 
the honor of having originated the common, or free- 
school system. This system was borrowed by Fred- 
erick William II, of Prussia, one of the wisest of 
modern monarchs. When this monarch ascended the 
throne, the American common-school system had been 
in operation nearly a century and a half, and was 
well matured. He introduced it, and it has been 
carried to wonderful perfection in Prussia, and intro- 
duced into other portions of Europe. The Sunday 
school, the Missionary Society, the Tract and Bible 
Societies, are means ordained by God in this age, 
designated as the time of the end, wherein ''knowl- 
edge is increased." 

It is an age characterized hy great and rapid 
locomotion. The introduction of the steam-engine 
has wrought wonders. The earth is becoming one 
grand net-work of railways, while the majestic 
steamer is coursing its way over every ocean and 
along every river. The age immediately preceding 
our own could number but few good roads or high- 
ways; and there were no railroads. The "time of 
the end," when many should run to and fro, by 



THE NATION BORN IN A DAY. 77 

means of railroads and steamboats, had not yet 
dawned upon the world. Formerly hut few traveled 
abroad; now the facihties for traveling are such that 
men from every section of the globe meet and min- 
gle, and interchange views and opinions on all 
subjects of interest, and thus again "knowledge is 
increased." No other age ever presented such facil- 
ities for the diffusion of knowledge. And never 
before were the messengers of truth so active in 
spreading the light. The Church is sending forth her 
heralds of salvation to the ends of the earth, while 
those who sit in darkness are receiving the light, and 
learning of a Savior, even Jesus. 

These leading characteristics of the present age 
show it to be the time of the end. Such an age is 
worthy of being designated by Jehovah as the birth- 
time of a great free nation, and the time when the 
seal upon those prophecies relating thereto should be 
loosed, and they understood and applied. 

The prophet gives us another method of determin- 
ing "the time of the end," which was to be the 
period of the nation's birth. It was to be twelve 
hundred and ninety days from the taking away of 
the daily sacrifice in the Temple at Jerusalem, and 
the destruction of the Jewish capital. "And from the 
time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away, and 
the abomination that maketh desolate set up, there 
shall be a thousand, two hundred and ninety days." 
It was also to be three and a half times from the 
same event. " That it shall be for a time, times and 



78 THE AMERICAN KEPUBLIC, 

a half." Dan. xii, 7-11. In order to a correct un- 
derstanding of this argument, which is purely mathe- 
matical, it will be necessary to explain, as briefly as 
may be, the nature of sacred time, as it was known 
among the Hebrews. 

It is well known that a day — that is, a prophetic 
day — in the Scriptures symbolizes a year. "After 
the number of the days in which ye searched the 
land, even forty days, each day for a year, shall ye 
bear your iniquities, even forty years." Numb, xiv, 
34. "And thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house 
of Judah forty days : / have appointed thee each day 
for a yearT Ezek. iv, 6. 

" All Hebrew time greater than a day was divided 
into weeks of days, weeks of weeks, weeks of weeks 
of weeks, or three hundred and forty-three days, 
weeks of months, and weeks of years. The Sab- 
batic year was the seventh year ; and the Jubilee was 
a Sabbatic year, and occurred every forty-ninth year. 
The first Jubilee year was the fiftieth after the pos- 
session of Canaan, the first being rest year; but the 
Jubilee period itself was only forty-nine years long, 
and was made up of seven Sabbatic ; and the Jubilee 
year coincided with the seventh Sabbatic year, so that 
there were not two rest years in succession." 

Time was also divided into sacred and civil time. 
Every seventh day was a holy day; and every sev- 
enth year was a holy year ; and every week of weeks 
of years, or every Jubilee, closed with a year more espe- 
cially sacred than any other rest year. They also 



THE NATION BORN IN A DAY. 79 

had two kinds of calendar years: one began in the 
month Nisan, and was the sacred or ecclesiastical 
year ; the other began in the month Tisri, six months 
later, and was the civil year at which the jubilee was 
sounded. The sacred year was, from the best in- 
formation we are able to gather, three hundred and 
sixty-four days long. This year was composed of 
fifty- two weeks. The civil year, according to Cal- 
met, was co'mposed of twelve months. The length 
of this year coincided with the solar year as near as 
it was possible for a year of days to coincide with a 
true solar year. It must therefore have coincided 
with the present Julian year, which was imported 
from Egypt, and no doubt derived from the Hebrews. 
It would then have been three hundred and sixty-six 
days long every fourth year, and three hundi'ed and 
sixty-five days long three years in every four. 

The Hebrews had their abbreviated time, or labor 
time. This labor week, or secular week, contained 
less time than the full week. Of this kind were the 
seventy weeks of Daniel. We know these weeks to 
be secular or abbreviated weeks, from the fact that 
the Hebrew word, in the phrase "seventy weeks are 
determined upon thy people," so declares it. The 
English word '^determined,'' in our version, is trans- 
lated from the Hebrew word neciitac, which literally 
signifies short, cut, cut off, abbreviated, decided. In 
the Septuagint neciitac is rendered into Greek by a 
word whose primary meaning is to cut, to cut off, to 
abridge, to abbreviate. In the Vulgate neciitac is 



80 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

rendered by the words " ahhrevitce sunt,^' which sig- 
nify abbreviated. Such is the evidence that the sev- 
enty weeks of Daniel were abbreviated weeks. 

There is further evidence of this in the fulfillment 
of the seventy weeks, which makes it necessary that 
the sacred or holy time should be added to make up 
the number of years which we know intervened be- 
tween the commencement and fulfillment. Labor 
weeks of days or years always imply the coexistence 
of rest time; rest time consists of Sabbath days, 
regular holy days, and Sabbatic years ; to obtain the 
full amount of solar time transpiring in seventy labor 
weeks, the coexistent rest time must be added; the 
amount of rest time to be added must be determined 
by the amount of rest time existing in the Hebrew 
Calendar. The result of such additions will be sym- 
bolic or Hebraic years, and must be considered as 
representing solar years without any reductions, or 
they may be reduced to solar time. 

With these statements in regard to the nature of 
Hebrew time, we shall proceed to present the mathe- 
matical argument upon this subject, which we tran- 
scribe mainly from a sermon preached before the 
members of Congress on this subject by Rev. Mr. 
Pitts. The decree of Cyrus for the emancipation 
of Israel was published in the last month of the year 
537, B. C, December 6th, as is found by the coinci- 
dence of an eclipse of the sun predicted by Thales 
the Milesian, that occurred B. C. 601, as well as the 
historic account of those ages. The crucifixion of 



THE NATION BORN IN A DAY. 81 

Christ was on the 25th of March, A. D. 29 — vulgar 
era — as found also by an eclipse of the moon and 
other historic records. And the destruction of the 
Jewish state began on the 21st of Nisan, A. D. 68. 
The seventy weeks of Daniel were to begin at the 
decree of Cyrus, and to end at both the other named 
epochs. From the decree of Cyrus to the crucifixion 
was 564 years and 109 days; and from the same 
decree to the last general Jewish Passover was 603 
years and 129 days. These two lengths were em- 
braced in the seventy weeks, and show the precise 
duration of those weeks, as exactly as if that many 
weeks transpired to reach the events predicted. This 
fact no one can deny. Now, the explanation of the 
matter is simple: the seventy weeks are Hebrew 
weeks of years, or 490 years. But there are, as we 
have seen, abbreviated weeks ; that is, they require the 
addition of one or more kinds of sacred time to com- 
plete them. By adding the Sabbatic days which 
would be in 490 years, we have 490+70 = 560 years. 
These are symbolic years of 360 parts; and as a 
symbolic year may stand for any Hebrew year of 
years, it may stand for the one of 364. Then Ave 
have the equation of time, as 360 : 364 : : 560 : 566|. 
These 566| years are composed of 364 days each; 
and by reducing them to solar time of 365 days, 5 
hours, 48 minutes, and 47t(j seconds to the year, wo 
have 564 years and 109 days as the fulfillment ex- 
hibits. In a similar manner the other results may 
be found. 



82 THE AMEllICAN REPUBLIC. 

The three times and a half of Daniel — chapter 
twelfth — are by this mode of explanation easily un- 
derstood. Three and a half times or years are equal 
to 1260 symbolic years. To this, if we add Sabbatic 
years proportionably, we have 1440 years ; and again 
adding proportionable Sabbatic years, or one to every 
six, we have 1680 years. Then, as the symbolic 
year of 360 parts may represent any Hebrew year, 
it may represent the year of 366 days or parts. We 
then have the following equation : 360 : 366 : : 1680 : 
1708 years, or 623,833 days, 17 hours, 1 minute, and 
40 seconds. 

These three and a half times were to begin at the 
cessation of the daily sacrifice — the daily sacrifice 
was offered at sunrise. The sun rose at the meridian 
of old Jerusalem on the 189th day A. D. 68, about 
6 o'clock, A. M. This, then, is the beginning of the 
three and a half times, or the 1260 symbolic days, 
or the 2300 ^' evening mornings." An evening morn- 
ing sacrifice was a lamb sacrificed at sunrise and a lamb 
sacrificed at sunset — two lambs a day. So 2300 are 
equal to 1150 days ; add the proportion of Sabbatic 
time, and 2300 ''evening mornings" equal 3J times. 
These lengths all agree, and embrace, in solar time, 
623,833 days, 17 hours ; and, from the last Jewish 
sacrifice, end, at the meridian of Philadelphia, at a 
quarter to three o'clock in the afternoon of July 4th, 
1776. The Declaration of Independence was made 
at that hour. Thus, precisely, did the prophet point 
out the time of our nation's birth. 



THE NATION BORN IN A DAY. 83 

A similar result may be reached by the 1290 days 
from the destruction of Jerusalem, by an addition of 
the proper Sabbatic time ; so that from both these 
calculations, which prove each other, we have the 
time. 

Another length of these times is 1335 days, which, 
by the same rule, equal 1810 years, and will end in 
1878. These two endings begin and close the ''time 
of the end," and answer to the rise of the American 
Republic, and, perhaps, the extension of Christ's 
Church over the entire earth. 

Daniel's 70 weeks embrace the time from the de- 
cree of Cyrus to build and restore the city and Tem- 
ple, to the crucifixion of Christ and the destruction 
of Jerusalem, which, in solar time, was 564 years to 
the first event, and 603 years to the latter. And 
from this last event, the destruction of the holy place, 
it was to be three and a half times, or 623,833 days 
and 17 hours to the rise of a great nationality. 

Now, if 70 symbolic weeks are equal to 564 solar 
years, three and a half times, or 1260 symbolic days, 
are equal to 1708 solar years ; but 1708 solar years, 
or 623,833, reach from the burning of the Temple, 
on the 189th day of the A. D. 68, to the 4th day 
of July, 1776. 

Let it be remembered that the 70 weeks call for 
two endings — the cutting off of Messiah, and the de- 
struction of Jerusalem, or the holy place. But these 
two events are thirty-nine (39) years apart. The 
two lengths are made out, as we have said, by adding 



84 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

the proper Sabbatic time of days, weeks, and years, 
as authorized by the Jewish calendar ; for the weeks 
are themselves ^^ determined,^' nechtac, cut short or 
abbreviated weeks; so that both lengths are accu- 
rately fulfilled, and are correctly termed " 70 weeks." 

But to suppose, as do nearly all the old com- 
mentators, that a day means a year, without the ad- 
dition of the sacred time, and that 70 weeks are 
to be understood as 490, is to fall short of the events 
predicted 94 years in the first case, and 113 years 
in the second; consequently, their theory can not be 
correct. But time has not only demonstrated their 
error in the 70 weeks, but also in relation to the 
1260 and 1290 days which follow. If days meant 
years without the Sabbatic time, who can tell us 
what great nationality arose at the end of 1290 
years after the destruction of Jerusalem? Or what 
other great event happened that could be construed 
into a fulfillment? Positively none. 

The calculation being purely mathematical, and 
being guided by astronomy, has been rigidly made to 
the decimal fraction of a second, and must be re- 
liable. 



THE FIFTH POWER. 85 



CHAPTER Y. 

THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC, THE FIFTH POWER 

SYMBOLIZED BY THE STONE CUT FROM 

THE MOUNTAIN. 

1. The Vision. — " Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without 
hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and 
clay, and hrake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the 
brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became 
like the chaff of the Summer thrashingfloors ; and the wind carried 
them away, that no place was found for them : and the stone that 
smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole 
earth." Dan. ii, 34, 35. 

2. The Interpretation. — "And in the days of these kings shall the 
God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed : and 
the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in 
pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. 
Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mount- 
ain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the 
clay, the silver, and the gold j the great God hath made known to 
the king what shall come to pass hereafter : and the dream is cer- 
tain, and the interpretation thereof is sure." Dan. ii, 44, 45. 

The fifth power, predicted in this passage from 
Daniel, has been interpreted to mean Christian- 
ity, by most expositors of the prophecies. Why 
they should have given an interpretation so entirely 
opposed to the plain statements of the text, we can 
not conceive. It may, however, have grown out of 
the fact that the first expositors of the prophecies 



86 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

were all wedded to the monarchical form of govern- 
ment, and knew little, if any thing, of any other; 
and seeing that this did not point out a monarchy, 
and never having dreamed in their philosophy of a 
Republic, they interpreted it to mean the Church. 
This opinion, having been fixed in the Church in an 
early day, was adopted by a large majority of later 
commentators, and that, too, it would seem, without 
examining the subject with any degree of care for 
themselves. 

This fifth power can not apply to the Church, for 
the reason that the prophet was not speaking of the 
Church, but of political governments. Four of these 
governments were symbolized by the different parts 
of the great human image, and the fifth by the " stone 
cut from the mountain without hands." Any one 
who will examine the subject carefully and critically, 
must admit that there is nothing in the description 
of the fifth power which would lead to the supposi- 
tion that the Church was intended, while there is 
much to fix the impression that a great civil power is 
there pointed out. 

The four governments symbolized by the me- 
tallic image are called kingdoms — a title common to 
the governments of the world ; the fifth power is also 
called a kingdom, leaving us to infer that, as the 
term, when applied in the first instance, meant a civil 
government, so it must in the last. Now, if the 
Church, under the Christian dispensation, was in- 
tended, why was not some new term introduced by 



THE FIFTH POWER. 87 

way of distinguishing it from the civil power? We 
admit that the term kingdom is a title applied to the 
Church, but it is always so connected with the name 
of God as to leave no ground of doubt as to its mean- 
ing: it is ''the kingdom of God," "my kingdom," 
"the kingdom of heaven." Now, if the prophet had 
said, " In the days of these kings the God of heaven 
shall set up Ms kingdom," it would have given a 
different meaning to the whole scope of the passage. 

The prophet proceeds to compare these govern- 
ments. This fifth government is to be established by 
the God of heaven; the four which preceded it had 
risen by the agency of man. This is in harmony 
with the idea that God, having shown his disapproba- 
tion of monarchical form of government, never plants 
monarchies ; but having shown his approval of the 
republican form of government, "sets up" republics. 
The prophet in this statement affirms that the time 
shall come when God shall establish a civil power in 
the world. 

The kingdom of God was set up in the early his- 
tory of the world. It was made visible in the family 
of Abraham, by the rite of circumcision. Genesis xii, 
15-22. From that day to the present God has al- 
ways had a kingdom, a Church; it has never been 
thrown down, or ceased to be, and could not, there- 
fore, be said to be " set up by the God of heaven, in 
the days of the kings." With the republican gov- 
ernment which God planted among the Hebrews, it 
was different. That Republic, after standing for four 



bo THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

hundred and sixty-four years, was changed to a mon- 
archy, and as a theocratic Republic virtually ceased 
to exist; so that the language of the prophet would 
apply to its reestablishment with great propriety. 

This fifth power was not to "be given to other 
people," as had the four which preceded it. Babylon 
was given to the Medes and Persians ; the empire of 
Medo-Persia passed over to the Macedonians, and 
that to the Romans. The fifth power was to be 
subject to no such change. But what are the facts 
in regard to the kingdom of God? Was not that 
literally given to other people? It was taken from 
the Jews and given to the Gentiles, which fact is 
clearly set forth in the parable of the vineyard and 
passages of God's Word. ''Hear another parable: 
There was a certain householder, which planted a 
vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a 
wine-press in it, and built a tower, and let it out to 
husbandmen, and went into a far country : and when 
the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants 
to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits 
of it. And the husbandmen took his servants, and 
beat one, and killed another, and stoned another. 
Again, he sent other servants more than the first : and 
they did unto them likewise. But last of all he sent 
unto them his son, saying. They will reverence my 
son. But when the husbandmen saw the son, they 
said among themselves. This is the heir; come, let 
us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance. And 
they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, 



THE EIFTH POWER. 89 

and slew him. "When the lord therefore of the vine- 
yard Cometh, what will he do unto those husbandmen ? 
They say unto him, He will miserably destroy those 
wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto other 
husbandmen, which shall render him their fruits in 
their season. Jesus saith unto them. Did ye never 
read in the Scriptures, The stone which the builders 
rejected, the same is become the head of the corner : 
this is the Lord's doings, and it is marvelous in our 
eyes? Therefore say I unto you, the kingdom of 
God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation 
bringing forth the fruits thereof." Matt, xxi, 33-43. 
Here the Church under the old dispensation is termed 
"a viyieyardy The building of the tower and dig- 
ging of the wine-press, and the hedge placed round 
about it, shows the care which God exercised over it. 
He sent the Church his prophets at dijfferent times as 
he deemed needful, and they beat some, stoned others, 
and some they killed. "At last, he sent his Son, 
saying. They will reverence him." But this they 
did not do; "he came to his own and his own re- 
ceived him not." " This is the heir," said the Jews ; 
" come, let us kill him," " and they cast him out of 
the vineyard and slew him." The Jews crucified the 
Son of God and rejected him as the true Messiah, 
and the kingdom of God was taken from them and 
given to the Gentiles. This fact, of itself, it seems 
to us, should settle the question as to the fifth power 
being a civil power, and not the Church. The gov- 
ernment of the United States has never been given 



90 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

to other people, and never shall be. The fifth gov- 
ernment was to destroy all other political powers, and 
was to take their place. JSTow, we are not to sup- 
pose that when the monarchies of tiie world are de- 
stroyed that there is to be no civil government in 
the world ; which would be true if that destruction is 
to be effected by the Church. 

This fifth power can not mean the Church, for the 
reason that the time fixed for the rise of the fifth 
power does not harmonize with the time of the rise of 
the Church. It was to rise at a time when the Ro- 
man Empire should be broken, symbolized by the toes 
of the image. This breaking did not begin till the 
last part of the fourth century after Christianity ap- 
peared. It was to rise at a time when there were 
kings upon the thrones of the kingdoms into which 
the Roman Empire had been divided. "In the days 
of these kings." Dan. ii, 44. Christianity rose at 
a time when the Roman Empire was yet undivided 
and at its hight. Caesar Augustus was upon the 
throne swaying his scepter over an empire which em- 
braced all the world. " And it came to pass in those 
days that there went out a decree from Caesar Augus- 
tus that all the world should be taxed." Luke ii, 1. 
Christianity was established much too early to har- 
monize with this prophecy. This fact of time has 
greatly perplexed expositors of the prophecies, and 
we have seen no one who has reconciled the time of 
the rise of the fifth power with the time of the rise 
of Christianity. It is a little remarkable that any 



THE FIETH POAVER. 91 

one, TV'itli this plain statement as to the time of the 
establishment of this fifth power, should ever, for a 
moment, have supposed that it applied to the Church 
of Christ. 

This fifth power, so far from being the Church, 
was to come out of the Church. '' Cut from the 
mountain without hands." The term mountain here 
is only another term for the Church. The ancient 
Temple, which was a type of the Church, was built 
upon an eminence of a mountainous range passing 
through Palestine, which was called Mount Zion. 
In allusion to this fact the Church, whether spoken 
of under the old or new dispensation, is called Mount 
Zion mountain. "And it shall come to pass in the 
last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house 
shall be established upon the tops of the mountains, 
and exalted above the hills; and all nations shall 
flow unto it." Isaiah ii, 2. "And in this mountain 
shall the Lord of Hosts make unto all people a feast. 
And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the 
covering cast over all people." Isaiah xxv, 6, 7. 
All admit that these beautiful passages refer to the 
triumph of the Church in the last days. They fix 
the meaning of the term mountain. This new power, 
then, was to be the child of the Church, and not the 
Church itself. The Republic of the United States 
came out of the Church, and as such is a Christian 
government. This subject will be treated in a sub- 
sequent chapter, in which it will be shown how the 
government came out of the Church. 



92 THE American republic. 

A distinguislied Scotch divine — Tillinghast — who 
wrote about the middle of the seventeenth centmy, 
takes a position similar in regard to the fifth power. 
He does not apply it to our own Government, for he 
wrote a century and a quarter before the establish- 
ment of the United States; but he contends that it 
must represent a civil pov^er and not the Church. 
But let him speak for himself: 

"The kingdom of the stone is a kingdom, in re- 
spect of nature, the same with the kingdom repre- 
sented by the great image; that is, it is outward as 
they are outward, which appears: 1. From the gen- 
eral scope and drift of the prophecy which was upon 
outward kingdoms. All the first four kingdoms or 
monarchies are outward, as none can deny. Why, 
then, the Holy Ghost, in speaking of the fifth and 
last, should so far vary the scope as to glide from 
the outward kingdom to the inward, ought — besides 
the bare say-so — to have some solid and substantial 
reason brought for it by those, whosoever they are, 
that either do or shall assert it. 2. Because it is not 
proper to say that a bare spiritual kingdom, consid- 
ered only as spiritual, should break in pieces, beat to 
very chaff, grind to powder the great image; that is, 
destroy the very being of worldly kingdoms, which 
work is yet, notwithstanding, done by the stone. In- 
deed, Christ's spiritual kingdom may, by that light 
and life which it gives forth, much refine and reform 
outward kingdoms ; but when once the work comes to 
breaking and breaking to pieces — that is, subverting 



THE FIFTH POWER. \)6 

kingdoms, razing their very foundations, and destroy- 
ing their very being — as they are the kings of this 
world here, unless we conceive God to do it by a 
miracle, must we conceive some other hand besides a 
spiritual put to the work? 3. Because the stone, to 
the end there might not be a vacancy in the world, 
comes straightway in the place and room of the great 
image, so soon as the same is totally broken. For 
as the great image, while standing, bears rule over 
all the earth, so the same being broken, the stone 
becomes a mountain, and fills the whole earth ; there- 
fore must the kingdom of the stone be such a king- 
dom as was that of the stone — namely, outward — 
or otherwise the coming of that in the place of the 
other taken away could not supply the want of the 
other." 

Had Tillinghast lived in the nineteenth century 
instead of the seventeenth, there is little doubt but 
he would have understood the fifth power to be the 
Repubhc of America. 



94 THE AMERICAN EEPUBLIC. 



CHAPTER TI. 

THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC SYMBOLIZED BY THE 
MAN-CHILD BORN IN THE WILDERNESS. 

"And there appeared a great wonder in heaven ; a woman clothed 

with the sun, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars 

And there appeared another wonder in heaven ; and behold a great 
red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns 

upon his heads And the dragon stood before the 

woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as 
soon as it was born. And she brought forth a man-child, who was to 
rule all nations with a rod of iron : and her child was caught up unto 
God, and to his throne. And to the woman were given two wings of 
a great eagle that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place. 
. . . . And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood, 
that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood. And the 
earth helped the woman." Rev. xii. 

The prophecy relates to two principal subjects — 
the woman driven into the wilderness, and the man- 
child of which she was delivered. The two will be 
considered separately; and, 

I. The woman driven into the wilderness. 

1. The woman symholizes the Church. It is generally 
admitted that the woman here symbolizes the Chris- 
tian Church. She is " clothed with the sun," which, 
in the opinion of Bishop Newton, means that she is 
invested with the rays of Jesus Christ, the Sun of 
Righteousness ; " having the moon," the Jewish new 



THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC SYMBOLIZED. 95 

moons and festivals, as well as all sublunary things, 
" under her feet ;" " and upon her head a crown of 
twelve stars/*' an emblem of her being under the 
light and guidance of the great doctrines taught by 
the twelve apostles. 

2. The dragon symbolizes the tyranny of the Roman 
Empire. The red dragon is a symbol of tyranny. 
Purple or scarlet was the distinguishing color of the 
Roman emperors, consuls, and generals, as it has 
been since of the popes and cardinals. The "red 
dragon," then, is a symbol of the tyranny of the 
Roman Empire after it was divided into ten king- 
doms, which is shown by the ten horns of the dragon. 
This dragon persecuted the woman. The cruel per- 
secutions of the Church by pagan and Papal Rome 
are facts of history. The persecutions referred to 
here took place after the Reformation. 

3. But one flight of the woman into the ivilderness. 
Bishop Newton claims, very properly we think, that 
there was but one flight of the woman into the wil- 
derness, the first being said by way of prolepsis. 
This is evident from the similarity of circumstances. 
The persecutions and the time given are the same in 
both cases. 

4. The flight into the wilderness^ the Pilgrims flying 
to America. What, then, was this flight of the 
woman ? asks the able author of the " Key to Reve- 
lation." Suppose a new continent had been lately 
discovered where these Protestants were thus perse- 
cuted; a continent nearly uninhabited, and in all the 



96 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

wildness of nature, far from the face of tlie old, 
Papal, Roman earth ; a wilderness of nine thousand 
miles in length, embracing all the climes, fertilities 
of soil, beautiful varieties and natural conveniences, 
desirable for the habitation of the greatest and most 
happy people on earth : suppose it to have been put 
into the minds of the best of the Protestants, under 
their cruel persecutions from the dragon, to flee over 
a vast ocean, to form their settlement in this New 
World, in order to find a peaceful asylum for the 
rights of conscience and the rights of man : sup- 
pose them entering into the flight, and, by the single 
protection of Heaven, safely reaching that far-distant 
continent : suppose God then protects them, in- 
creases them, and causes them to become an active, 
great, and renowned nation, having the freest inter- 
course with every part of the globe, established in 
the enjoyment of a Church separated from civil 
power, the rights of conscience and civil hberty, set- 
ting examples of reform to nations : suppose their 
descendants soon to multiply into a great nation, to 
become the hope of the oppressed for all other na- 
tions, and to bid fair to be a great means of the con- 
version and bliss of the world: suppose the Church of 
Christ there to flourish far beyond all other Churches 
on earth, and to form there the seat for the com- 
mencement of the special showers of the Spirit of 
grace in the last days, and to seem to be clearly des- 
tined to give a new and correct model to the whole 
militant Church of Christ — let these things be sup- 



THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC SYMBOLIZED. 97 

posed, and then let ijhe question be asked, What and 
whither is the flight of the woman described in the 
Revelation ? Would you not immediately point to 
this new region of the Church, and say. Thither was 
her flight, and there is her gracious lodgment by pro- 
pitious Heaven ? This is all reality, as the American 
branch of Christ's Church can testify. 

Could so vast an event of this kind be overlooked, 
when things far less interesting are detailed in Reve- 
lations ? Edwards was confident that the Church in 
America must have a place in prophecy ; and we 
have in one of his volumes a labor of seven pages to 
find something in the prophecies clearly alluding to 
it; but he and others have strangely failed to fix 
their eye upon this striking prediction. 

The twelfth chapter of Revelation, which sketches 
the course of the most important events for the part 
of the Christian era antecedent to the millennium, is 
the part of this book where these predictions might 
be expected. And it is found in the very part of 
this chapter where it might have been expected; an 
event succeeded and occasioned by the persecution 
which followed the Reformation of the sixteenth cen- 
tury. It is well known that the great body of the 
Church, which was sorely persecuted by Jesuits and 
others, fled to America. "The Church of the exiles," 
says Mather, " was driven out into the horrible wil- 
derness, merely for being well-wishers of the Refor- 
mation." " Our Lord Jesus Christ carried some thou- 
sands of the reformers into the retirements of the 



98 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

American desert, that he might give a specimen of 
good things, to which he would have his people else- 
where aspire and rise." The history of those times 
shows that Christians in Europe often looked to those 
in America for counsel and example in spiritual 
matters. 

Bradford remarks : " This is at last the spot of the 
earth which the Lord of heaven spied out for the 
seat of such transactions as require to be noted in 
history. Here it is that our Lord intended a resting- 
place for the Reformed Church." The same author 
remarks that ^' one hundred and ninety-eight ships 
were employed in their passing the perils of the seas 
in the accomplishment of this renowned settlement, 
and but one miscarried." Such was God's special 
care over his Church in her flight into the wilderness 
of the New World. 

These facts of history are so perfectly in harmony 
with the prophecy, as to make the fulfillment com- 
plete; so, at least, it seems to us. Deny this view 
of the subject, and what other event since the Ref- 
ormation answers the requirements of the prophecy ? 
History answers. None ; absolutely none. Is not this 
exposition as clear, as full, and as well established as 
that of a majority of the prophecies concerning the 
Church? This view of the subject throws a new in- 
terest around the history of that wonderful people, 
the Pilgrim Fathers, the Huguenots, and others, who 
fled from the fires of persecution in the Old World to 
seek an asylum in the New. How fully and dis- 



THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC SYMBOLIZED. 99 

tinctly the right hand of Him who is the head of his 
Church is seen in preparing the place, and in prepar- 
ing the people for it, and then bringing them safely 
into possession of it ! He who is accustomed to read 
history, with a view of seeing God in it, can not fail, 
Ave think, in passing tlu-ough that portion in which 
these truths are chronicled, to feel that he treads 
along a historic pathway where the Divine Architect 
of history left the impress of his footsteps, and s5t 
up lights and landmarks to guide and inspire the 
student of liistory. When we read the prophecies, 
then, in the twelfth chapter of Revelation, concern- 
ing the flight of the woman into the wilderness, let 
us remember that it represents the flight of the per- 
secuted Pilgrims and others across the ocean into the 
wilds of America, And when we shall read the his- 
tory of those times, as chronicled by the pen of the 
faithful historian, let us remember that we are re- 
counting the scenes and events which were both the 
subject and fulfillment of that prophecy. 

II. We come now to consider the man-child born of 
the woman in the wilderness. 

There are various opinions as to what this man- 
child was intended to represent. The view enter- 
tained by Bishop Newton, and others equally distin- 
guished, is, that it represents Constantine. But if 
our position relative to the flight of the woman be 
correct, it could not apply to Constantine, who occu- 
pied the throne of the Roman Empire more than a 
thousand years before the Reformation ; while it is 



100 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

evident that the persecution of the woman by the 
red dragon, her flight into the wilderness, and the 
birth of the man-child, were all of them events which 
transpired after the Reformation under Luther and 
his coadjutors. These facts of themselves, it would 
seem, are quite sufficient to refute that view of the 
subject. But to make the man-child represent Con- 
stantine would be a violation of the law of symbols. 
One human being is not used as the symbol of 
another human being. A great human image is the 
symbol of several governments or empires, and a 
human being, a woman, is a symbol of the Christian 
Church; and her offspring may symbolize an enlight- 
ened government, a Christian republic, but not a 
man. 

That this man-child is the symbol of a civil power, 
or nationality, is evident, from the rod which was 
given him to rule, which is always an ensign of poHt- 
ical power. This man-child, then, does not represent 
Christ, nor Constantine, but an enlightened nation- 
ality. TMs view is in harmony with the laws of 
types, and the rules of prophetic interpretation, and 
is fully sustained by the plain, positive teaching of 
the Holy Scriptures. It is very correctly said that 
Scripture is its own best interpreter. It is really 
wonderful how one passage, which appears dark and 
difficult to understand, will be lighted up and ex- 
plained by another, remote from it, penned perhaps 
ages after, or before, yet having an intimate connec- 
tion with it. So it is in this case. Here is a great 



THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC SYMBOLIZED. lOl 

fact set forth in that book of symbols, the Revehxtion 
of St. John, about which the wise differ; but it is 
discovered that the prophet Isaiah wrote upon the 
same subject more than seven centuries before, and 
by an interchange of terms, or the placing in appo- 
sition of one term with another, cleared the subject 
of all obscurity, leaving it within the comprehension 
of all. 

Isaiah says : '' Before she travailed, she brought 
forth; before her pain came, she was delivered of a 
man-cJdld. Who hath heard such things ? who 
hath seen such things ? Shall the earth be made to 
bring forth in one day? or shall a nation be born at 
once? for as soon as Zion travailed, slie brought 
forth." The term " Zion," in this passage, which is 
the title of the Church of God, settles the meaning 
of the ^' Avoman clothed with the sun." The ^Unan- 
cMld," and the " nation horn at once^^ are put in ap- 
position — that is, the one explains the other — they 
mean the same thing. Now, the conclusion is irre- 
sistible relative to the man-child born of the woman 
in the wilderness. It must mean a nationality; and, 
being the offspring of the Churchy it must mean a 
highly -enlightened Christian nationality. 

Now, we claim that the nationality symbolized is 
the United States of America. This follows as a 
logical deduction from the foregoing established facts. 
These ficts fix the time and place of this nationality ; 
the tiine, since the Reformation ; and the p?(i'C(^, the 
place of the Church — America. No other nation has 



102 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

risen during that period, so that it leaves the case 
bejond the possibility of reasonable disputation. 
But while there is no room left for dispute, there is 
further evidence of the truth of our position in the 
historic facts, which sustain three particulars charac- 
terizing the man-child, whom we have shown to rep- 
resent an enlightened nationality. 

1. This man-child was born of the woman; that is, 
the nation was to be the offspring of the Church. 
This same fact, as we have seen, in former chapters 
of this work, was declared by both Isaiah and Dan- 
iel, and is repeated here a third time. Isaiah's ^' na- 
tion born of Zion at once;" Daniel's "stone cut from 
the mountain ;" and John's " man-child born of the 
winged woman ;" all represent the same fact. Thus 
did God, through inspired prophets, at periods remote 
from each other, and from the event itself, point out 
the fact, that there should rise up out of the Church, 
or be established through her direct Divine agency, 
a great, free, and mighty nation, which should break 
to pieces all monarchical forms of government, and 
become as universal and enduring as God's own 
Church, from which it came out. 

But, is there evidence that our nation is the child 
of the Church? The facts of history, not very re- 
mote, answer and settle this question. "A young 
French refugee," says that distinguished historian, 
Bancroft, " skilled alike in theology and civil law, in 
the duties of magistrates, and the dialectics of religious 
controversy, entering the Republic of Geneva, and 



THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC SYMBOLIZED. 103 

conforming its ecclesiastical discipline to the princi- 
ples of republican simplicity, established a party, of 
which Englishmen became members, and New En- 
gland the asylum. The enfranchisement of the mind 
from 7'eligious despotism led directly to inquiries into 
the nature of civil government; and the doctrines of 
popular liberty, which sheltered their infancy in the 
wilderness of the newly-discovered continent, witliin 
the short space of two centuries, have diffused them- 
selves into the life-blood of every rising State, from 
Labrador to Chili; have erected outposts on the Ore- 
gon, and in Liberia, and making a proselyte of 
France, have disturbed all the ancient governments 
of Europe, by awakening the public mind to resist- 
less action, from the shores of Portugal to the 
palaces of the Czars." In this eloquent passage, it 
will be observed that the distinguished author makes 
the Church the cause of which the civil Government 
of this country is an effect. 

That greatest of statesmen, Daniel Webster, in his 
Bunker Hill oration, bears similar testimony in the 
following passage : " It has been said, with very much 
veracity, that the felicity of American colonists con- 
sisted in their escape from the past. This is true 
so far as it respects political estabhshments, but no 
further. They brought with them a full portion of 
all the riches of the past in science, in art, in re- 
ligion, and literature. The Bible came ivith them; 
and it is not to be doubted that to the free and 
universal reading of the Bible is to be ascribed, in 



104 THE AMEKICAN REPUBLIC. 

that age, that men were indebted for right views of 
Civil Liberty. The Bible is a book which teaches 
man his own individual responsibility, Ms own dignity, 
and Ids equality with Ms felloiv-men.'^ 

These great minds are not alone in ascribing the 
origin of our free government to Christianity. Others 
have thought and written upon the same subject with 
great ability. The resemblance between the great 
principles of Christianity and the principles of liberty, 
as found in our free government, is evidence that the 
government is the offspring of the Church. This 
resemblance of principles has resulted in the use of 
like terms of expression ; so that the language of the 
Christian Church in this country and the popular 
language of civil liberty is the same. Such are, 
"The truth shall make you free;'' "Born free and 
equal." But look at the teachings of Christianity 
and the magna cJiarta of our republican government. 
They are identical on the fundamental principles of 
the liberty and equality of man. The language of 
the Government is, "That all men are born equal, 
and that they are endowed with certain inalienable 
rights, among which are hfe, liberty, and the pursuit 
of happiness." This wonderful passage bears upon 
word and letter a Divine impress. It reads as though 
it had flowed from Truth's divine fountain near the 
eternal throne. The language of Christianity is, 
"As ye would that men should do unto you, do 
ye even so unto them." Here we have our own 
rights and feelings made the standard of our conduct 



THE AMERICAN llEPUBLIC SYMBOLIZED. 105 

to others. But can this be true on any other hy- 
pothesis than that the rights and feehngs of others 
similarly situated are identical with our own? If 
our rights constitute the measure of that treatment 
which others may demand at our hands, is not this 
proof positive that our rights and theirs are identical? 
If we dare not do to another what another dares not 
do to us, are we not on the most absolute equality? 
And if this rule is binding, does it not place all 
men on the most absolute equality? The universal 
adoption of this principle, expressed alike in Clii-is- 
tianity and civil liberty, would sweep down, with the 
force of Niagara, all usurpation, all oppression, all 
tyranny, all that prerogative claimed by kings and 
nobles to ride, booted and spurred, over the great 
mass of humanity, trampling them down at will. 

2. That this nation is the child of the Christian 
Church is seen in the fact that Christianity prepared 
Europe and the New World for the great struggle of 
1776, in which the nation was born. Let us look 
more particularly now at some facts of history con- 
nected with the Church in the Reformation. 

In examining the evidence from history of the 
Christian origin of our Government, it will be neces- 
sary to go further back than the great struggle of 
1776. The American Revolution, though happening 
on this side of the Atlantic, was strictly a Euro- 
pean event. It was the result of the advance of 
society and the evolution of free principles in North- 
ern Europe. Had not Europe been what it was, 



106 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

America would never have been what it is. Europe 
of the fifteenth century, instead of Europe of the 
eighteenth, would have made the American Revolu- 
tion another war of the peasants, and its fate a coun- 
terpart of that of Poland. Hence, whatever tended, 
under the guiding hand of God, materially to modify 
or shape the state of society in Europe before 1776, 
exerted an influence on that memorable event. 

Great events sustain to each other the relation of 
cause and effect. That which is an effect to-day 
may become a cause to-morrow, producing its new 
event, and thus adding another link to the ever- 
lengthening chain of history. Now, we claim that 
the Reform.ation of the sixteenth century, which was 
itself an effect, becamxC a cause, and was used by God 
to prepare the way, both in Europe and in the New 
World, for the American Revolution and Independ- 
ence. An able article appeared in the Quarterly 
Review for 1846, to which we are indebted for sug- 
gestions and facts on this subject. 

The Reformation was not merely a religious move- 
ment, it was a great uprising of the human mind to 
throw off the trammels of ancient, prescriptive au- 
thority. It was a struggle for liberty of thought, 
speech, and action. The Papacy at that time was a 
vast politico-rehgious system, which claimed suprem- 
acy over all religions and governments, asserting its 
right to create and depose kings, to divide and allot 
kingdoms, and even to dispose of undiscovered regions 
of the earth, according to the sovereign will of the 



THE AMERICAN llEPUBLIC SYMBOLIZED. 107 

successor of St. Peter, and tlie secret decrees of the 
Vatican. Professing to be God's vicegerent on earth, 
it extended its authority to the very soul, and, under 
the awful penalty of eternal retribution, demanded the 
submission of thought itself to the decrees of popes 
and councils. The Pope said there should be but 
one mind, and that should be his own. Luther said 
there should be as many minds as men ; that men 
should think for themselves ; think freely, widely, in- 
dependently. Such was the issue ; and who can 
doubt that it tended to liberty? How could it be 
otherwise? The instinctive logic of the mind was, If 
the tyranny of priests be wrong, why not that of 
kings? If it be intolerable in religion, why not in 
politics ? Was it wrong in the greater and right in 
the less ? 

The Reformation was forced, in self-defense, to as- 
sert the right of free inquiry, liberty of speech, and 
popular freedom. It had no sooner arisen than it 
met with persecution. In order to show the injustice 
of this persecution and defend their opinions, liberty 
of thought, speech, and action was indispensable to 
them, and hence strongly asserted and maintained. 
The first books written against the absolute power of 
government were written by Protestants. The Puri- 
tans of England, the Huguenots of France, and the 
Dutch and German reformers were the bold advocates 
of the rights of the people. The reformers promul- 
gated the great truths of freedom and popular rights, 
and to them are to be traced the results of these 



108 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

truths which prepared the way and secured the suc- 
cess of the American Revolution. The treaty of 
Westphalia, which secured the liberties of modern 
Europe, was the direct result of the Reformation. 
Then followed the check on the grasping ambition of 
Austria; the rise of liberal views and extension of 
rights in France under Henry of Navarre ; the firm 
establishment of the Helvetian government ; and the 
two revolutions in England, by which the rights of 
the people were so much extended — all of which were 
not only the results of the Reformation, but the es- 
tablishment of principles which were essential to the 
success of the American struo;s;le. Such was the 
awakening of mind produced by the Reformation, 
that every department of thought produced its men 
of note. National jurisprudence became a science, 
and popular rights an acknowledged entity. 

The latter part of the sixteenth and the seven- 
teenth century produced more men of strength in 
every department of intellect, more discoveries of im- 
portance to the human race, and established in 
Northern Europe more great ideas and principles 
concerning popular rights than any period of time 
since the creation of the world. The spirit of enter- 
prise thus created in England produced the estab- 
lishment of British power in India; and this ex- 
erted, perhaps, a more direct influence on the success 
of our Revolutionary struggle than men commonly 
suppose. Laying aside all national prejudice, it 
might, perhaps, be difficult for an intelligent mind to 



THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC SYMBOLIZED. 109 

show that if British^elations in India had been dif- 
ferent in the latter part of the eighteenth century ; 
if her hold then had been less precarious, and the 
hopes of France to obtain this glittering prize less 
sanguine, the Revolutionary struggle might not have 
been more serious, at least, if not less successful. 

In the nature of things it was necessary that this 
general outbursting of thought and feeling, caused 
by the Reformation, should hav6 ultimately a channel 
in which to discharge its waters. That channel 
was the American Revolution, as no other event 
could be regarded as a development, on a large 
scale, of the new and important principles of the 
Reformation ; and as, in the nature of things, some 
such development was as necessary as a channel to a 
fountain, and as the American Revolution did rest 
on precisely the principles asserted by the Reforma- 
tion, we are necessarily led to regard it as that de- 
velopment. This great event, gathering in its mighty 
tide the mingled w^aters unsealed by the hand of the 
immortal Luther and his coadjutors, swept onward 
like our own " father of waters ;" at first struggling 
with opposing difficulties, but soon swelling and 
widening in the majesty of its resistless might, till it 
became the outlet of half a million. 

It is an interesting fact that the first colony planted 
in North America was planted by the dh-ect influence 
of the Reformation. Half a century before the land- 
ing of the Pilgrims a colony was planted by that 
devoted and brave man, Cohgny. This colony was 



110 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

founded in 1562, at Port Royal Inlet, S. C. The 
object was to give a place of refuge to the perse- 
cuted Huguenots, and to found a vast French Prot- 
estant empire which should fully embody the prin 
ciples of the Reformation. Had not this plan been 
frustrated, America, instead of being the offspring of 
England, would have been a child of ancient and 
chivalrous France. The Huguenot spirit, which was 
in part the embodied spirit of the Reformation, longed 
after freedom of thought, speech, and action, untram- 
meled by kingcraft or priestcraft. 

France, after receiving and cherishing the Reforma- 
tion till it had sowed the seed of freedom, rejected it, 
and banished more than five hundred thousand of her 
children who sought an asylum of freedom to worship 
God in the New World. The children of the Hu- 
guenots, in the struggle of the Revolution, retained 
their ancestral love of freedom; and in the halls of 
Congress, and on som.e of the hotly-contested fields 
of the South, left the same testimony of the Protest- 
ant spirit of antagonism to tyranny that yet speaks 
in the blood of their martyred fathers from the vine- 
clad hills of beautiful and sunny France. 

But when we think of the men who gave character 
to the Revolutionary struggle, we instinctively turn 
to the land of the Pilgrims, and on Plymouth Rock 
we see the fire kindled that proved the beacon of the 
world. Had not New England been what she was, 
Old England would not have been what she is — the 
rival instead of the mistress of America. The spirit 



THE A]V1ERICAN REPUBLIC SYMBOLIZED. Ill 

of tlie Revolution ^rst appeared there because it had 
been planted there by men" who forsook home and 
father-land for freedom to worship God. Its first 
embodied organizations were there formed, for there 
had England first sown the dragon's teeth that were 
to spring up armed men. The first victims that bled 
on its green altar were the childi^en of the Pilgrims; 
the first giant blow that sundered the bonds uniting 
the Old World and the New was struck on the soil 
that enshrined the hallowed dust of the Pilgrim 
Fathers. The Puritan was at once the child of the 
E-eformation and the child of liberty. They be- 
queathed their principles to their descendants, who, 
in the Hancocks, the Adamses, the Otises, the 
Warrens, and the Franklins of the Revolution, were 
worthy of the lofty and unflinching spirit of their 
fathers. 

These powers were not the only elements mingling 
in this mighty production of the advancing history 
of the world. '' God sifted three nations for seed to 
sow this virgin soil." There mingled with the chil- 
dren of the Huguenot and Puritan the children of 
the men who, on the level plains of Holland, wrested 
from the bigoted Philip the heritage of the Reforma- 
tion. The descendants of these men inherited this 
glorious patrimony, and asserted it at Saratoga, White 
Plains, Monmouth, and Princeton. Thus we see how 
God used the Reformation in preparing the way in 
producing and shaping that struggle which gave the 
world civil liberty. 



112 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

3. It is said the "di'agon stood bj the woman, 
ready to devour her man-child as soon as it was 
born; but the child was caught up unto God, and 
to his throne, and the earth helped the woman." 
Expositors agree that caught up unto God and to 
his throne signifies God's special providence; so that 
whatever is symbolized by the man-child was under 
the special providence of God. The "earth" means 
the place of monarchy, or it may mean some part of 
what was once the old Roman Empire. The several 
passages teach that, so soon as we should declare our 
independence, or date our existence as a nation, the 
tyranny of England would make special efforts to 
crush us; but that we should be protected by God's 
special providence — that that providence would bring 
us help from the place of monarchy, and from mon- 
archy itself. 

With this view the facts of history harmonize. No 
sooner was the Declaration of Independence adopted 
by Congress than renewed efforts were made to crush 
the infant nation. General Howe, who had taken 
possession of Staten Island only two days before, 
exerted himself with great energy. By the first of 
August he was joined by his brother, Admiral Lord 
Howe, with a fleet and large land force from En- 
gland, together with other vessels and troops, making 
a force of more than thirty thousand soldiers, many 
of whom were tried troops. The republican army 
only amounted to seventeen thousand effective men, 
and many of these were raw militia, who knew little 



THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC SYMBOLIZED. 113 

of the use of arms or the hardships of war. They 
lay intrenched in New York and vicinity, less than 
a dozen miles distant. 

Lord Howe and his brother, the General, were com- 
missioned to treat for peace, but only on terms of 
absolute submission on the part of the Colonies. 
Being assured that the Americans would make no 
such treaty, they prepared to strike an immediate 
blow which they hoped would be effective in crushing 
the republican cause. The British Parliament was 
not idle; measures best calculated to aid their troops 
in the field and speedily crush the cause of freedom 
were adopted. Already Parliament had voted an ag- 
gregate land and naval force of fifty thousand men, 
and more than a million dollars, to be used against 
the rising Republic. In addition to this, seventeen 
thousand Hessian troops had been hired to come over 
and help the dragon '' devour the man-child born of 
the woman." Parliament now voted an addition of 
one hundred and twenty thousand men, and one hund- 
red millions of dollars. But our enemies were not 
all from abroad. In some of the Colonies there were 
strong parties against the cause of liberty, and in 
favor of tyranny. In New York the parties were of 
nearly equal strength. In South Carolina there were* 
more Royalists than Whigs. Thirty Tory regiments, 
with twenty thousand Tories, fought against us in 
the Revolutionary struggle. 

With all tiiis fearful odds against us we should 

have been annihilated but for the special providence 

10 



114 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

of God. But he that was with us was more than all 
that were against us. Washington and those under 
his command were inspired with a confidence in the 
final success of their cause which never faltered, not 
even in the darkest hour of the protracted struggle. 
The members of Congress seemed to be endowed with 
special wisdom; the plans of the enemy were frus- 
trated. When Cornwallis embarked on the York 
River to make his escape from Yorktown on a calm 
evening, a terrible storm suddenly arose, compelling 
him to return, and his large army of nearly seven 
thousand British soldiers, with shipping and seamen, 
seventy-five brass and one hundred and sixty iron 
cannons, seven thousand, seven hundred and ninety- 
four muskets, twenty regimental standards, a large 
quantity of musket and cannon balls, and nearly 
eleven thousand dollars in specie in the military 
chest, were surrendered to Washington. Our own 
reverses were overruled for our good, and greatly to 
our advantage. 

This protecting providence is beautifully expressed 
in one of our hymns, itself a version from the forty- 
fourth Psalm : 

** 'T was not their courage or their sword 

To them salvation gave; 
'T was not their numbers or their strength 

That did their country save ; 
But thy right hand, thy powerful arm, 

Whose succor they implored ; 
Thy providence protected them 

Who thy great name adored." 



THE AMERICAN llEPUBLIC SYMBOLIZED. 115 

But God's providence sent us lielp from the seat 
of monarchy, and raised us up friends where they 
were not to be expected. It is well known that the 
American cause had an able friend in William Pitt, 
Earl of Chatham, who was called to the head of the 
English Ministry a few weeks after the Declaration 
of Independence. He brought all the influence of 
his high position and the power of his superior tal- 
ents to bear in favor of the oppressed Colonies. In 
referring to the resistance of the people to the ob- 
noxious" tax act, Pitt said, ^' I rejoice that America 
has resisted. Three millions of people so dead to all 
the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to become slaves, 
would have been fit instruments to make slaves of 
the rest." Pitt was joined by Burke and Barre. 
The latter declared "that the Colonies were planted 
by English oppression, grew by neglect, and in all 
the essential elements of a free people were perfectly 
independent of Great Britain." 

France gave us her noble Marquis de Lafayette. 
Lafayette, as an important agent in the American 
Revolution, raised up by God's special providence, 
was second only to Washington. He was descended 
from one of the most ancient and eminent families of 
the French nobility. He married the daughter of the 
Duke de Noailles, a beautiful heiress. He had an 
income of twenty-four thousand dollars per year. 
He was a captain in the garrison at the city of Metz, 
where, at a dinner party given by his commanding 
General, to a British Duke, ho first heard that tho 



116 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

American Colonies had declared their independence; 
and before finishing his meal he formed the noble 
purpose of drawing his sword in the cause of Ameri- 
can liberty. Lafayette was possessed of military 
qualities of the highest order. His wealth, his posi- 
tion, his rare qualities of excellence, and his family 
connections, gave him great influence. That noble 
patriot came with his wealth, his talents, his military 
skill, and his extensive influence, and presented them 
as a most willing offering in the glorious cause of 
American liberty. He came in a ship purchased, 
furnished, and fitted out with his own means, and 
brought with him the brave and noble Baron De Kalb, 
and eleven other French and Polish officers. He first 
landed on the coast of South Carolina, and made a 
land journey across the country to Philadelphia, where 
the Continental Congress gave him a Major-General's 
commission. The confidence of Congress w^as not 
misplaced; from the day of his appointment he ren- 
dered efficient service in the field, of which there is 
evidence at Barren Hill and Brandy wine, the retreat 
from Rhode Island, and the successful campaign in 
"Virginia. At one of those dark periods in the Revo- 
lution, when Congress had no money and but little 
credit, Lafayette, from his private funds, clothed and 
supplied with tents his entire command. No hard- 
ships were too great for him to endure, no undertak- 
ing too hazardous, if thereby the American cause 
might be furthered. He made four voyages across 
an ocean white with the sails of the enemy's ships, 



THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC SYMBOLIZED. 117 

that he might further our interests. His influence at 
the Court of France, in our faVor, was ahiiost unlim- 
ited. Count Maurepas, Prime Minister to Louis 
XVI, declared that such was the influence of Lafay- 
ette, that if he had asked that the Palace of Versailles 
should be stripped to furnish funds for his dear 
America, the king would not have been able to refuse 
it. It was through his influence that the Government 
of France acknowledged our independence; lent us 
money to replenish our exhausted treasury ; sent a 
squadron of twelve ships of the line, and four frigates, 
under Count D'Estaing, to blockade the British in the 
Delaware ; sent us a powerful fleet under Admiral 
Ternay, bearing six thousand troops, under the Count 
de Rochambeau ; made Washington a Lieutenant- 
General of the French Empire, to prevent difiiculties 
in relation to command between American and French 
ofiicers, and allowed him to take precedence of Rocham- 
beau, and made him Commander-in-Chief of the allied 
armies. His influence at the Court of Spain brought 
about a treaty of peace between France and Spain, 
and made Spain friendly to the American cause. But 
that which did more, perhaps, than any thing else, to 
hasten the war to a close, and compel an acknowl- 
edgment of our independence, on the part of Great 
Britain, was a movement on the part of Lafayette, by 
which he persuaded the Governments of France and 
Spain to send a joint expedition, for the American 
service, of sixty ships of the line, and twenty-four 
thousand troops, to be commanded by himself. • 



118 THE AMEEICAN REPUBLIC. 

Who can read these striking facts without seeing 
and acknowledging the Divine Hand bj which this 
great mind was raised up, and especially endowed for 
the work to which he was called, in the cause 
of human liberty ! The citizen of a monarchy, he 
comes forth a hero in the cause of liberty, and by his 
wonderful influence he brings that monarchy, with its 
treasures of men and money, and its influence as one 
of the great powers of Europe, to defend that very 
cause which he has so nobly espoused. Considering 
his wealth and position, in society, he might have 
remained at home, in the enjoyment of all that this 
world can bestow; but he sacrifices ease and pleas- 
ure, with all the endearments of home, counting 
not his life dear that he might advance the interests 
of liberty. Next to Washington, as an agent raised 
up by God's special providence, to aid the struggle 
of the Revolution, w^e place Marquis de Lafayette. 
Let his noble deeds, with those of Washington, be 
cherished by the defenders of liberty to the latest 
generations of time. 

The Russian Empire, at the time we commenced 
our struggle, had entered upon a new career. That 
remarkable woman, Catherine the Second, a German 
Princess, ascended the throne July 9, 1762, by mur- 
dering her husband. Under her rule the Empire rose 
rapidly into power ; and had Russia thrown her in- 
fluence with Great Britain it would have been greatly 
to our disadvantage ; but Russia declared neutrality. 
This, in connection with the fact that Spain had 



THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC SYMBOLIZED. 119 

declared war against her, and was already menacing 
her with a powerful armament; and that the Ameri- 
can cause was gaining throughout Europe, made it a 
matter of necessity for Great Britain to acknowledge 
our independence and treat for peace. 

Thus was the man-child caught up unto God and 
to his throne, and thus did the earth help the woman. 
Need we further evidence that this nation is the 
child of Christianity? Do not these striking facts 
of history establish the truth of the proposition be- 
yond reasonable doubt or cavil? 



120 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 



CHAPTER YII. 

THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC ESTABLISHED BY THE 
DIRECT INTERPOSITION OF GOD. 

The ''fifth power ^' pointed out by the prophet 
being the United States, it was to be set up by God. 
" And in the days of these kings shall the God of 
heaven set up a kingdom." Dan. ii, 44. 

1. God's disapproval of monarchies. 

God has shown his positive disapprobation of the 
monarchical forms of government. When Israel asked 
to have a king like the heathen nations around them, 
God said to Samuel : '''Protest solemnly unto them and 
shozv them the manner of the king that shall reign over 
them J' 1 Sam. viii, 9. 

2. God never plants monarchies. 

Such being the dim estimate of monarchy, it is 
reasonable to infer that God never plants monarchies. 
He may permit them to rise just as he allowed Israel 
a king with his protest. "I gave thee a king in 
mine anger " — Hosea xiii, 11 — is the Divine language 
touching this matter. Now, if it shall appear from 
the facts of history that the United States was set 
up by God, then is it the fifth power, as God does 
not plant monarchies; and no Republic, except the 



DIVINE INTERPOSITION. 123 

United States, exist^dHbetween the time of the utter- 
ing of the prophecy and the time of the rise of the 
fifth power. 

3. God proceeded upon the same plan in establish- 
ing the Republic of the United States that he did in 
planting the Hebrew Commonwealth. 

As the first Republic, that of the ancient Hebrews, 
was established by Jehovah, and was designed as a 
type of our own, it is not unreasonable to suppose 
that the means used by the great Architect in build- 
ing the first temple of liberty would resemble those 
used in the erection of the second. But what was 
the Divine mode of procedure in the first instance? 
On this subject we have positive and direct informa- 
tion in Deut. iv, 32-34: "For ask now of the days 
that are past, which were before thee, since the day 
that God created man upon the earth, and ask from 
one side of heaven unto the other, whether there 
hath been any such thing as this great thing is, or 
hath been heard like it?" This important question 
was asked relative to the Hebrew Republic, which 
had no prototype. Other forms of government had 
existed, but nothing like this had been heard of. 
This interrogatory refers to the manner of the estab- 
lishment, as well as the nature of the government, 
which latter is expressed in the verses which follow 
" Did ever people hear the voice of God speaking out 
of the midst of the fire as thou hast heard and live? 
Or hath God assayed to go and take him a nation 
from the midst of another nation, by temptations, by 

n ' 



122 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

signs, and b}' wonders, and by war, and by a mighty 
hand, and by a stretched-out arm, and by great ter- 
rors, according to all that the Lord your God did for 
you before your eyes." Here are seven particulars 
enumerated, used by God in planting that nation; 
they are '^ temptations, signs, wonders, war, a mighty 
hand, a stretched-out arm, and great terrors." 

This is almost a perfect description of the means 
which God used in estabhshing the United States. 
Who does not know that we came into existence as a 
nation through '' temptations, and signs, and wonders, 
and war, and great terrors, hy a mighty hand and a 
stretched-out arm f 

(1.) The material out of which the nation was built 
was prepared as w^as that of Israel, in the fiery fur- 
nace of trial. This work of preparation continued 
through successive generations. It commenced far 
back in the past, and was carried forward by the In- 
finite One, till the fullness of the time had come when 
a mighty nation was born. Long had the cruel task- 
masters of despotism oppressed and persecuted even 
unto death the friends of civil and religious liberty. 
But like Israel in Egypt, they only increased the 
more, while God overruled their trials for theii' own 
development and the good of the world. Little did 
these suffering ones know of the good they were work- 
ing out for mankind in developing those God-given 
ideas of the equality and dignity of human nature. 

It is a wise feature in the Divine economy which 
perpetuates the truth a man may have brought to 



DIVINE INTERPOSITION. 123 

light after he has passed away. Truth, like its Di- 
vine Author^ is imperishable, eternal. It dies not 
when we die, but is left by us as a heritage to pos- 
terity. It is in the power of every man so to live 
through life, that his noble deeds, when he shall have 
ceased to be, will still live on as moral forces in the 
world, and, associated with his name, shall make that 
name to coming generations as "ointment poured 
forth." Such were the men by whom and through 
whom the great ideas of liberty were developed, from 
generation to generation. 

"Brewster, and Winthrop, and Roger Williams, 
and Penn, and George Calvert, and Oglethorpe, and 
Otis, and Adams, and Jefferson, and Washington, 
with their illustrious co-laborers, could trace their 
political parentage to Pym, and Hampden, and Wick- 
liffe, and Milton, and Cromwell, and to the ages in 
which they vindicated the principles of liberty, and 
sealed many of them their faith by martyrdom." 

(2.) The place for the nation's planting was provi- 
dentially prepared. " The principles that govern hu- 
man affairs," says Bancroft, "extending like a path 
of light from century to century, become the highest 
demonstration of the superintending providence of 
God. Universal history does but seek to relate the 
sum of all God's works of providence. The wheels 
of Providence are not turned about by blind chance, 
but they are full of eyes round about, and they are 
all guided by the Spirit of God. Providence is the 
light of history, and the soul of the world. God is 



124 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

in history, and all history has a unity because God is 
in it." 

On no page of the world's history is the right 
hand of God more clearly seen than on that which 
records the events connected with the discovery of 
this continent, and its preparation for the planting 
of a great, free nation. Irving, in speaking of Co- 
lumbus, says : " Columbus came as a religious man, 
an admiral of Christ, to find the continent, not for its 
material treasures, but because it held souls, which 
he wished to bring as a trophy to the feet of 
Christ." 

A deep, religious feeling mingled with his medita- 
tions. He looked upon himself as being in the hand 
of Heaven, chosen from among men for the accom- 
plishment of its high purpose. 

It is very remarkable that Columbus believed that 
his contemplated discoveries were foretold in the 
" mystic revelations of the prophets." " The ends 
of the earth were to be brought together, and all na- 
tions, and tongues, and languages united under the 
banner of the Redeemer." ^' This he believed was to 
be the triumphant consummation of his enterprise, 
bringing the unknown regions of the earth into com- 
munion with Christian Europe." 

Every new discovery which he made was celebrated 
with devout and humble thanks to Almighty God. 
As his ship neared the shores of the New World 
there went up from its deck the voice of prayer and 
praise ; and the moment he leaped upon the soil he 



DIVINE INTERPOSITION. 125 

prostrated himself in thanksgiving to God. More 
than a hundred years passed after the discoveries by 
Spain and England before any very successful at- 
tempt was made to colonize the country. That cen- 
tury was one of the most eventful in the history of 
the world. 

"The twelve decades," says an able writer, "from 
fourteen hundred and eighty to sixteen hundred, 
form one of the grandest and richest eras in the his- 
tory of humanity." It was in that period that lib- 
erty was planted. While this great work was going 
on in Europe, the New World was held in reserve 
that it might be planted with liberty. 

(3.) God safely conducted our fathers from the Old 
to the New World. Never was the Divine presence 
more clearly seen in conducting the people of Israel 
from Egypt to Canaan, across the Red Sea, than in 
bringing our fathers across a boisterous ocean to the 
place of their planting. On their voyage they ob- 
served days of fasting and prayer. Their answers to 
prayer are said to have been remarkable. They as- 
tonished the sailors, calling forth from them expres- 
sions of wonder and amazement. December 22, 
1620, was the commencement of a new era in the 
world's history. The landing, on that memorable 
day, of one hundi'ed and one Pilgrims on Plymouth 
Rock, was a most portentous event. In that noble 
band of brothers there dwelt a generative truth 
which was destined, under God, to shake empires 
and thrones to their fall, and sweep them into ob- 



126 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

livion as the chaff is borne away by the winds of 
heaven. Who can contemplate that event without 
the heart going up to the great Father of us all in 
grateful acknowledgments for his manifested good- 
ness to the children of men ? 

The Divine interposition in the Revolutionary 
struggle was manifested in raising up and qualifying 
those who were to be the principal actors in the scene. 
It is a feature of the Divine economy, that whenever 
a great work is to be done, the instrument is raised 
up, and fully fitted for its accomplishment. History 
gives us numerous and striking illustrations of the 
truth of this principle. 

When a new world was to be discovered, a Colum- 
bus was raised up. When it became necessary that 
the Church and the world should be lifted out of the 
tomb of the dark ages, the fountain of life unsealed, 
and the seed of the American Revolution and Amer- 
ican independence sown, the voice of the immortal 
Luther was heard. When the lights lit up by the 
Reformation were burning dimly, and Christianity 
seemed to be waning through the whole of Europe; 
when the times seemed to demand a higher style of 
Christian life, and society in both the Old and New 
Worlds needed a new element of Christian life, in 
order to complete the temple of liberty, that man of 
God, John Wesley, appeared, and under God inaugu- 
rated one of the mightiest revivals of pure religion 
that has ever blessed our world, and which the great 
Chalmers was pleased, truthfully, to denominate, 



DIVINE INTERPOSITION. 127 

" Chrisiianity in earnest^ So, too, when the work 
of preparation was finished, and the birth-time of a 
great RepubUc drew near, and one was needed to 
guide the hosts of freedom through the fiery tempest 
of war, God gave the worhl a Washington. 

But few men are distiii ^-uished for more than a 

o 

single trait of superiority. Alexander conquered the 
world, but could not govern himself. Napoleon was 
unsurpassed in military tactics, but in this alone he 
excelled his compeers. Homer, as a poet, was dis- 
tinguished for his beauty, Virgil for his sublimity, and 
Milton for his invention. Mozart was distinguished, 
but it was only for his powers of music; Aristotle 
for his metaphysical subtilities; and Newton for his 
powers of analysis. There are a few, however, who 
seem to possess a kind of universal genius — men who 
have made attainments varied and rare. These are 
the representative men of the ages, the ''lights and 
landmarks on the cUffs of fame." In this list, stretch- 
ing as it does all along down the line of time, from 
the early morning of our world to the present, are 
recorded the imperishable names of history. It is the 
record of God's noblemen. Here is found the name 
of the father of the faithful, Abraham ; of the Hebrew 
statesman, and President of the world's first Republic, 
Moses; of the statesman of Chaldea, and prophet of 
God, Daniel; of the apostle of the Gentiles, Paul; 
and the names of the Luthers, and Calvins, and 
Cromwells, and Wesleys. In this list of earth's great 
ones is chronicled the name of George Washington. 



128 THE AMERICAN EEPUBLIC. 

It is only once in a wMe that God opens the hand of 
his beneficence and gives the world a Washington; 
and yet, whenever a Washington is needed, he is 
given — Washington, " first in war, first in peace, and 
first in the hearts of his countrymen." 

In contemplating his character, military chieftain 
though he was, we are not brought to witness the 
bloody hero, returning from the battle-field, reeking 
with the blood of slaughtered thousands, but to the 
contemplation of a single character, in whom centered, 
and around whom clustered all those higher and purer 
virtues which adorn and beautify human character, 
and constitute the highest state of man. The name 
of Washington has in it a power which is felt to the 
ends of the earth, and which shall continue till the 
last throne of despotism shall have fallen, and the 
Republic of America become the Republic of the 
world. 

It is a suggestive fact that George Washington, 
who led forth the embattled hosts of freedom to 
victory and liberty, and who was President of the 
Convention which formed the old Articles of Con- 
federation, and of the Convention which formed the 
Constitution, and the first President of the nation, 
was a devout Christian, and a member of the Church 
of God. 

"I had heard much of his religious character," 
writes a chaplain of the Revolution, immediately after 
his appointment by Congress, " and hence looked with 
a great deal of anxiety for his first order, to see if 



DIVINE INTERPOSITION. 129 

there was any thing more than a mere formal recog- 
nition of the Supreme Being. To-day he issued it; 
and it was with a heart overflowing to God with 
gratitude that I read the following passage in it: 
' The General most earnestly requires and expects 
the due observance of those articles of war, estab- 
lished for the government of the army, which forbid 
cursing, swearing, and drunkenness; and in like man- 
ner he requires and expects of all officers and soldiers, 
not engaged on actual duties, a punctual attendance 
on divine service, to implore the blessing of Heaven 
upon the means used for safety and defense.' " 

He was often found engaged in earnest prayer for 
guidance and success. Dr. Edward Thomson has 
somewhere said of Washington, "that he fought the 
American Revolution through on his knees." It is 
said that at early morning, on that ever-memorable 
day of the battle of Yorktown, a member of the 
Society of Friends was heard to say the Americans 
will achieve a great victory to-day; and when asked 
the reason said, "I saw Washington at dawn of day 
in the forest earnestly engaged in prayer." On one 
occasion Isaac Potts, whose house was Washington's 
Head-Quarters at Valley Forge, discovered Washing- 
ton in a retired place pouring out his soul in prayer 
to God. Potts went to his wife and said, "If there 
is one man on this earth to whom the Lord will listen 
it is George Washington." Washington was a man 
of strong faith in God; herein was the secret of his 
success. "I truly believe," said he, in a dark hour 



130 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

of the Revolution, '' God is with us ; and, though the 
way may be darlc and dreary, I beheve he will carry 
us through safely." Faith gives power to the human 
w^ill. He who would be great in action must will to 
perform, but in order to ivill he must believe the 
accomplishment possible. It may be laid down as a 
correct rule that the degree of the strength of our 
faith in God constitutes the measure of our power to 
plan and execute the great purposes of life. 

Washington seems to have been under the special 
protection of Heaven during the entire struggle for 
liberty. The Indian at Fort Pitt, after aiming his 
deadly rifle and firing seventeen times at Washington, 
taking deliberate aim each time, gave up in despair, 
and gave it as his opinion that the youthful com- 
mander was under the special protection of the Great 
Spirit. This opinion of the savage was undoubtedly 
correct. God, who sees the end from the beginning, 
had a great work in reserve for Washington, and by 
the shield of his protection he rendered him immortal 
till his work was done. 

The coadjutors of the immortal Washington were 
men of rare qualities. Never before did the world 
produce, in any single age, so many men of superior 
ability. The temple of liberty was not to be reared 
by entered apprentices, but by master builders. 

James Otis, who was among the first champions 
of freedom, and who lifted his voice against the 
tyranny of the British Government as early as 1761, 
was educated under Christian influence by a pious 



DIVINE INTERPOSITION. 131 

clergyman. In that Christian school he learned to 
love liberty and hate despotism. " Otis," said John 
Adams, ''is a flame of fire. With a promptitude of 
classical allusions, a depth of research, a rapid sum- 
mary of historical events and dates, a profusion of 
legal authorities, a prophetic glance of his eyes into 
futurity, and a rapid torrent of impetuous eloquence, 
he hurried all before him." The speech referred to 
here is the one made in Boston on port duties, alluded 
to before. It is said that Adams, who was young 
at the time, heard the speech, and the impression 
received was never lost. " American independence," 
says Adams, "was then and there born; the seeds 
of patriots and heroes to defend the vigorous youth 
were there and then sown. In fifteen years — that 
is, in 1776 — he grew up to manhood and declared 
himself free." " There can be," said Otis, " no pre- 
scriptions old enough to supersede the law of nature 
and the grant of Almighty God, who has given all 
men a right to be free. The right of every man 
to his life, his liberty, no created being can rightly 
contest. God made all men naturally equalJ' 

Joseph Warren, who fell at Bunker Hill, in 1775, 
in the very commencement of the Revolutionary 
struggle, was a graduate of Cambridge University, a 
ripe scholar, an eloquent orator, and possessed of rare 
military ability. Speers tells us there was hardly 
any one whose example exercised a more inspiring 
and elevating influence upon his countrymen and the 
world, than that of the brave, blooming, generous, 



132 THE AMERICAN KEPUBLIC. 

self-devoted martyr of Bunker Hill. Such a charac- 
ter is the noblest spectacle which the world affords. 
The friends of liberty from all countries, and through- 
out all time, as they kneel upon the spot that was 
moistened by the blood of Warren, will find their bet- 
ter feelings strengthened by the influence of the 
place, and will gather from it a virtue in some degree 
allied to his own." Warren offered his life a most 
willing sacrifice on the altar of freedom. On the 
morning of the battle he said to a friend, " I know I 
may fall ; but where is the man who does not think 
it glorious and beautiful to die for his country ?" 
Noble patriot! thy name is embalmed in the hearts 
of a nation. We will not forget thee. We will grow 
better while we contemplate those noble deeds which 
have wrested thy name from the oblivious power of 
death, and rendered imperishable. 

Samuel Adams was a devoted Christian, a most 
exemplary member of the Church. In his house was 
an altar, from which there ascended to God, evening 
and morning, sacrifices of thanksgiving and praise. 
No patriot of the Revolution stood higher than Sam- 
uel Adams. The ink of his signature to the Declara- 
tion of Independence was hardly dry, when, from the 
steps of the State-House in Philadelphia, he thrilled 
and moved the gathered thousands of patriots with 
his eloquence. John Adams, the orator of the Rev- 
olution, signer of the Declaration of Independence, 
the first Yice-President, and the second President of 
the American Republic, was a scholar of rare acquire- 



DIVINE INTERPOSITION. 133 

merits, a devoted -Gtristian, and a member of the 
Christian Church. 

Patrick Henry, that man whose eloquence, like the 
tempest, swept all before it, that moved the friends 
of liberty to a speedy resistance to British tyranny, 
was a firm believer in the doctrines and truths of the 
Christian religion. His biographer, Wirt, tells us that 
he was a sincere Christian. His favorite works were, 
Doddridge's Rise and Progress of Religion in the 
Soul, Butler's Analogy of Religion, Natural and Re- 
vealed, and Jenyns's Views of the Internal Evidences 
of the Christian Religion. He estimated the Bible 
above all other books. *' Here," said he to a friend, 
holding up the Bible, ^'is a book worth more than all 
other books ever printed." 

John Hancock, the President of Congress in 1776, 
another patriot, who first signed that covenant of 
life, the Declaration of Independence, was the son 
of a Christian minister, of the State of Massachu- 
setts, and himself a most consistent Christian. Early 
in the struggle for liberty he thus speaks : " I have 
the most animating confidence that the present noble 
struggle for liberty will terminate gloriously for 
America. And let us play the men for our God, 
and for the cities of our God ; while we are using the 
means in our power, let us humbly commit our 
righteous cause to the great God of the universe, 
who loveth righteousness and liateth iniquity." 

Thomas Jefi'erson, the father of the Declaration of 
Independence, has been charged with being an unbe- 



134 THE AjVIERICAN REPUBLIC. 

liever in the Holy Scriptures. Never was a charge 
more unjust. " He," says one who wrote understand- 
ingly upon the subject, "believed in God, the creator 
of all things, in his overruling providence, infinite 
wisdom, goodness, justice, and mercy. He believed 
that God hears and answers prayer, and that human 
trust in him is never misplaced nor disregarded. He 
believed in future rewards and punishments. He be- 
lieved in the truth of the Bible, and gave largely to 
the Bible cause, and to the erection of churches." 
The following Christian sentiment is found in his 
first Message as President of the United States : "I 
shall need the favor of that Being in whose hands we 
are, who led our fathers, as Israel of old, from their 
native land, and planted them in a country flowing 
with all the necessaries and comforts of life ; who has 
covered our infancy with his providence, and our riper 
years with his wisdom and power ; and to whose good- 
ness I ask you to join with me in supplications, that 
he will so enlighten the minds of your servants, 
guide their counsels, and prosper their measures." 
" Can the liberties of a nation," said he, " be thought 
secure, when we have removed their only firm basis, 
a conviction in the minds of these people, that their 
liberties are the gifts of God? that they are not vio- 
lated except by his wrath? Indeed, I tremble for 
my country, when I reflect that God is just, and that 
his justice can not sleep forever." 

In 1818 Mr. JeiFerson wrote a letter of condolence 
to John Adams, on the occasion of the death of his 



DIVINE INTERPOSITION. 136 

wife, in which he ^x^resses a hope of soon meeting 
his departed friends, whom he shall still love, and 
from whom he shall never be separated. He closes 
his letter thus : " God bless you, and support you un- 
der your heavy afflictions !" 

In all his early State papers of importance, such 
as a summary view of British America, his portion 
of the declaration made by Congress on the cause of 
taking up arms, the di*aft of the Constitution for 
Vii'ginia, the Declaration of Independence, and in 
his inaugural addresses, there is a clear and pointed 
recognition of God and his providence. The last 
years of Mr. JeJBfer son's life were occupied in estab- 
lishing the University of Virginia, which he desired 
should rival the Universities of Oxford and Cam- 
bridge, in England. He included in his plan the 
estabhshment of a theological department, in which 
all religious denominations might be represented. 
We are inclined to believe that this charge of atheism 
against Mr. Jefferson has grown out of a hatred to 
the Declaration of Independence. If, as Dr. Smith, 
of South Carolina, says, the Declaration of Independ- 
ence is an "atheistic doctrine," then was its author, 
Thomas Jefferson, an atheist. 

Dr. Franklin, that wise philosopher and able states- 
man, was reared under Christian influence. In early 
life he read a small work, entitled "Essays to Do 
Good," from the pen of Dr. Matthews. In advanced 
life he acknowledged that if he had done any good 
for his country or his fellow-men, he owed it to 



136 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

the impressions received from this book in his early 
youth. His life was an exemplification of the prin- 
ciples of religion. 

This list might be extended to a much greater 
length did space permit. We have given these as 
a sample of the whole. They were God's chosen 
instruments, and as such they were "able men, such 
as fear God; men of truth, hating covetousness, and 
known among the people." But we are not to sup- 
pose that the fair temple of liberty was reared with- 
out the polishing hand of woman. The records of 
history, from the earliest to the latest times, testify 
to the efficiency of woman's influence in molding 
and polishing the institutions of civil society. She 
who with her own hands gathered acacias and rushes 
from the banks of the ancient Nile, and constructed 
an ark of safety for the emancipator and the Presi- 
dent of the world's first Republic in his hours of 
helpless infancy, has been made a powerful agent in 
the destruction of oppression. The edifices of human 
society would present but a rough exterior were it 
not for the pohshing hand of woman. Her influence 
during the rearing of the temple of American liberty 
was incalculable. It was under woman's molding in- 
fluence that America's great statesmen were devel- 
oped. She was a prominent actor in preparing that 
broad basis of intelligence on which the superstructure 
of liberty was built. 

During the Revolutionary struggle they contributed 
to the cause of liberty by their earnest prayers, their 



DIVINE INTERPOSITION. 137 

godly example, their great self-denial, and their pure 
patriotism. Mrs. Ellet remarks : ^' I have been struck 
by the fact that almost all were noted for piety. The 
spirit that exhibited itself in acts of humanity, cour- 
age, patriotism, and magnanimity was deeply a re- 
ligious one. May we not with reason deem this an 
important source of the strength that gave success 
to the American cause ? To inflame the fires of 
freedom by mutual interchanges of feelings, and to 
keep them burning in the hearts of all around, they 
formed freedom associations, and entered into written 
pledges to make every sacrifice they could for their 
country." 

When the high duty was imposed on tea, three 
hundred heads of families in Boston entered into a 
written covenant " that they would totally abstain 
from tea till the revenue acts were repealed." This 
example of the matrons was followed by their daugh- 
ters, who thus resolved: 

"We, the daughters of those patriots who have 
and do now appear for the public interest, and in 
that principally regard their posterity, as such do 
with pleasure engage with them, in denying ourselves 
the drinking of foreign tea, in hopes to frustrate a 
plan which tends to deprive a whole community of 
all that is valuable in life. 

''Bosto7i, February 12, 1770." 

An association called the Daughters of Liberty was 

formed in Boston. Fifty of its members met one 

day at the house of a friend, and spun two hundred 

12 



138 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

and thirtj-two skeins of yarn. Many of the sons 
of liberty came among them and received fresh in- 
spiration in the cause of freedom. Liberty songs of 
the most stirring character were sung by all, and the 
meeting closed with new resolves and purposes to 
battle for the right. 

The young ladies of Mecklenburg and Rowan, 
North Carolina, entered into a written pledge not to 
receive the attentions of young men who would not 
volunteer in defense of their country. They declared 
that they " were of the opinion that such persons who 
stay loitering at home when the important calls of 
their country demanded their military service abroad, 
must certainly be destitute of that boldness of senti- 
ment, that brave and manly spirit, which would qualify 
them to be the defenders and guardians of the fair 
sex." Then, as in the present struggle, needful arti- 
cles of clothing were prepared by the fair hand of 
woman for the faithful soldier. 

When Lafayette, in 1776, in passing through Bal- 
timore, was given a public reception, he was observed 
to be sad. "Why so sad?" said a gay young lady. 
"I can not enjoy these festivities," said Lafayette, 
"while so many of the poor soldiers are without 
sheets and other necessaries." "They shall be sup- 
plied," responded the patriotic ladies of Baltimore. 
They immediately began the work, and ceased not 
till the soldiers were relieved. A British officer once 
remarked to Mrs. Pinckney, the wife of Charles 
Pinckney, an orator of the Revolution of great fame, 



DWINE INTERPOSITION. 139 

"It is impossible not to admire tlie intrepid firm- 
ness of the ladies of your country. Had your men 
but half their resolution, we might* give up the con- 
test. America would be free." 

Mrs. Ellet, in her Domestic History of the Amer- 
ican Revolution, remarks of the women of those 
times : " Throughout the war the influence and exer- 
tions of woman throughout the country contributed 
to impart a spirit of patriotism. They animated the 
courage and confirmed the self-devotion of those who 
ventured all in the common cause. They frowned 
upon instances of coldness and backwardness, and, 
in the period of the deepest gloom, cheered and 
urged on the desponding. They willingly shared in- 
evitable dangers and privations, relinquished, without 
regret, prospects of advantage to themselves, and 
parted with those they loved better than life, not 
knowing when they were to meet again. To her we 
are not less indebted for national freedom than to 
the swords of the patriots who poured out their 
blood." " That," said Adams, " was a time that 
tried woman's soul as well as man's." But amid all 
the hardships of that long struggle woman stood up 
firm and unmoved. 

Did space permit we might present a list of names 
of those women most distinguished in the great strug- 
gle for liberty. They form a bright chapter in our 
country's history. Among the prominent actors in 
that great work we must reckon the Christian minis- 
ters. The^se men of God brought all their powerful 



140 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

influence to bear in the direction of liberty. They 
preached on the subject, inspiring the people with 
pure patriotism. It is said those of them who had 
become advanced in life seemed to receive fresh in- 
spiration when discoursing on the subject of liberty. 
Many of them entered the army as chaplains, accom- 
plishing great good among the men. Others, who 
were wealthy, divided their estates among the desti- 
tute families of those whose husbands and fathers had 
gone into the service of the country. 

John Adams, in a letter to his wife, written at 
Philadelphia during the Continental Congress in 1774, 
says : '' Does Mr. Willibrand — pastor at Quincy — 
preach and pray against oppression and the cardinal 
vices of the times? The ministers here, of all de- 
nominations, thunder and lighten every Sabbath; 
they pray for Boston and Massachusetts ; they thank 
God explicitly and fervently for our remarkable 
success ; they pray for the American army ; they 
seem to feel as if they were among you." 

"To the pulpit," said Charles Francis Adams, 
"we owe, in a very great degree, the moral force 
that won our independence." 

The Divine interposition was manifested in " teach- 
ing our Senators wisdom." Congress, from the 
very commencement, seems to have been under the 
special influence and guidance of Him who is in- 
finite in wisdom. The members seemed to feel their 
need of heavenly wisdom, and they sought it at the 
Fountain of all knowledge. No atheistic sneering at 



DIVINE INTERPOSITION. 141 

the ^'higher law." God's authority, as the supreme 
lawgiver and ruler of the universe, was fully and con- 
stantly recognized by the entire body. He who 
would have dared to show contempt for the authority 
of God's Word would have been deemed unfit to oc- 
cupy a place in that gathering of Christian states- 
men. 

When the first Congress convened in Philadelphia, 
it was moved that each morning session should be 
opened with prayer. Next morning Rev. Mr. Duche, 
of Philadelphia, a pious and devoted Christian minis- 
ter of the Protestant Episcopal Church, was called. 
The news had reached there that Boston was cannon- 
aded by the British. It produced a strange sensa- 
tion. It being the 7th day of the month, the thirty- 
fifth Psalm, wherein David prayed for protection 
against his enemies, was included in the lesson to be 
read. ^' Plead my cause, Lord, with them that are 
against me. Take hold of shield and buckler and 
stand up for my help. Draw out also the spear and 
stop the way of them that persecute me. Say unto 
my soul, , I am thy salvation." This Psalm spoke 
the feelings of all present. John Adams, in writing 
to his wife, said : " I never saw a greater effect upon 
an audience." It seemed as though the Psalm was 
written especially for the occasion. Dr. Duche, after 
reading it, broke out in an extemporary ' prayer 
which seemed inspired. The Divine presence came 
especially near, and all hearts were awed into rever- 
ence before the great Arbiter of battles. These men 



142 THE AMERICAN KEPUBLIC. 

had but little idea of the great thing Jehovah was 
about to accomplish through theu^ instrumentality. 
" The fullness of time had come for the birth of a 
great, free nation. As God manifested himself in a 
special manner to Israel on the occasion of the estab- 
lishment of the first Republic, so now, as he was 
about to establish the second, the Republic of the last 
time, that which was to be to Christianity what the 
Hebrew Republic was to the Jewish Church, he mani- 
fests his presence in a special manner. Who can 
contemplate that occasion without deep emotions of 
heart ? 

Frequent were the demands made by that old Con- 
gress upon all the people of the Colonies to prostrate 
themselves before God in prayer, humiliation, and 
thanksgiving. With this the people were always 
well pleased, and with a steady heart and willing 
mind always complied with these reasonable and just 
requests of Congress. In 1778, Congress, address- 
ing the people on the cruelties practiced by the ene- 
my, remarked : " Notwithstanding these great provo- 
cations, we have treated such as fell into our hands 
with tenderness, and studiously endeavored to alle- 
viate the afflictions of their captivity. This conduct 
we have pursued so far as to be by them stigmatized 
with cowardice, and by our friends with folly. But 
our dependence was not upon man. It was upon 
Him who has commanded us to love our enemies and 
render good for evil. Do not believe that you have 
been or can be saved merely by your own strength. 



DIVINE INTERPOSITION. 143 

No, it is by the assistance of Heaven ; and this you 
must assiduously cultivate by acts which Heaven ap- 
proves." Such was the language of men whose fields 
were laid waste, whose dwellings were fired, and 
whose brethren were slaughtered by a foreign and 
vindictive foe. And the people were as a body ani- 
mated with the same regard for religious obligation as 
their representatives. No popular massacres nor 
any official insult to religion disgrace our Revolution- 
arv annals. 

Oh the capture of Burgoyne Congress ordered a 
public thanksgiving, and exhorted the people to con- 
secrate themselves to the service of Almighty God, 
and to offer their humble supplications that it might 
please him, through the merits of Jesus Christ, to 
forgive their sins and prosper the means of religion 
for the promotion and enlargement of that kingdom 
which consisteth in righteousness, peace, and joy in 
the Holy Ghost. 

Congress acknowledged the Divine authority of the 
Bible, and recommended to their constituents the 
constant observance of its precepts. - It is an inter- 
esting historical fact, that at one of the most critical 
periods of the war, and only two weeks before Con- 
gress was driven from Philadelphia by the enemy, 
that body was deliberating on the means of keeping 
up a supply of the Scriptures for their constituents. 
Thirty thousand copies were ordered to be printed. 
This was in 1777. It was soon found this could not 
be done, and they were ordered to be shipped from 



144 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

Holland, but the war prevented. Congress again took 
the matter under consideration in 1781, and had them 
printed by Mr. Aikin, of Philadelphia. Thus did the 
Congress of the nation constitute itself the first 
American Bible Society, for the diffusion of the Word 
of God without note or comment. 

In view of all these facts, who will say that this is 
not a Christian nation set up by the God of heaven? 
Would we know the difference between a Christian 
Kepublic and one that is infidel, we have only to in- 
stitute a comparison between the Republic of 'the 
French in 1792, and that of our own. France re- 
jected the Bible, and, after burning a large number 
of copies, a Bible was lashed to the tail of an ass 
and dragged through the streets of Paris, a fit pre- 
lude to the scene which baptized her sunny hills with 
blood. The Convention appointed a Committee to 
inquire if there was a God, afiirming at the same 
time that if there was a God, and it should appear 
that he was not needed, they would annihilate him ; 
and if there was no God, and there was one needed, 
they would make a God. The Committee reported 
that there was no God, neither was one needed. 
The result of all this was that a man could only de- 
fend himself so long as he could do it with the 
strength of his own arm. Thousands of the best 
minds in France felt the keen knife of the guillotine, 
and after ten years of the most terrible anarchy 
and bloodshed, four millions of the French people 
said to Napoleon, "Here is all the power we have, 



DIVINE INTERPOSITION. 145 

take it, and take care of us with it, for we can not 
take care of ourselves." 

That, reader, was an unchristian, an infidel Re- 
public — a Republic which inscribed upon the tomb 
as its best legacy to its citizen, " Death is an eternal 
sleep." 

The guiding hand of God was seen in the forma- 
tion of the Constitution of the United States, first, 
in raising up and qualifying the workmen for their 
duties. "It was a most fortunate thing," says Curtis 
in his History of the Constitution, '' that the Revolu- 
tionary age, with its hardships, its trials, and its mis- 
takes, had formed a body of statesmen capable of 
framing for it a durable Constitution." Various are 
the means used by Infinite Wisdom in fitting men for 
their responsibilities. In this instance the hardships 
and toils of the great struggle for liberty were made 
instrumental in developing and disciplining those 
distinguished statesmen who framed the Constitution. 
The leading persons in the Convention which formed 
the Constitution had been actors, in civil or military 
life, in the scenes of the Revolution. In these scenes 
their characters as American statesmen had been 
formed. When the condition of the country had 
fully revealed the incapacity of the Government to 
provide for its wants, these men were naturally looked 
to to save it from anarchy ; and their great capacities, 
their high disinterested purposes, their freedom from 
all fanaticism, and illiberahty, and their eg-rnest un- 
conquerable faith in the destiny of the country, 



14G THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

enabled them to found the Government which now up- 
holds and protects the whole fabric of liberties in the 
States of the Union. " Of this Convention," says 
another writer, " considering the character of the 
men, the work in which they were engaged, and the 
results of their labor, I think them the most remark- 
able body ever assembled." 

Secondly, in showing the framers of the Constitution 
their need of Divine help. The Convention which formed 
the Constitution met in Philadelphia, the 14th day of 
May, 1787. The several States which sent these men 
to the Convention to form a Constitution, had, in all 
their civil characters, expressed, as States, and as a 
people, their faith in God and the Christian religion. 
Most of the statesmen themselves were Christian 
men ; and the President of the Convention, <jeorge 
Washington, was a most decided and devoted Chris- 
tian. 

Never before had a body of men convened for an 
undertaking of greater importance to that and com- 
ing ages. They were to form a Constitution "suited 
to their character, their exigencies, and their future 
prospects." Judge Wilson, a member of that memo- 
rable Convention, thus speaks of it: "I can well 
recollect, though I can not, I believe, convey to others, 
the impression made, on many occasions, by the dif- 
ficulties which surrounded and pressed the Conven- 
tion. The great undertaking at some times seemed to 
be at a stand; at other times its motions seemed to 
be retrograde. At the conclusion, however, of our 



DR^NE INTERPOSITION. 147 

work, the members expressed their astonishment at 
the success with which it terminated." 

It was in the midst of these difficulties, after the 
Convention had spent more than a month, in what 
seemed to be fruitless toil, that Dr. Franklin, on the 
morning of the 28th of June, 1787, delivered the 
following able address : 

" Mr. Fi^esident, — The slow progress we have made, 
after four or five weeks' close attendance, and contin- 
ual reasoning with each other, our different senti- 
ments on almost every question, several of the last 
producing almost as many nays as yeas, is, methinks, 
a melancholy proof of the imperfection of the hum :n 
understanding. We, indeed, seem to feel our own 
want of political wisdom, since we have been running 
about in search of it. We have gone back to ancient 
history for models of government, and examined the 
different forms of republics, which, having been 
formed with the seeds of their own dissolution, now 
no longer exist; and we have viewed modern States 
all round Europe, but have found none of their con- 
stitutions suitable to our circumstances. In this sit- 
uation of this assembly, groping, as it were, in the 
dark, to find political truth, and scarce able to dis- 
tinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened, 
sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly 
applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our 
understanding? In the beginning of the contest 
with Great Britain, when we were sensible of danger, 
we had daily prayers in this room for the Divine 



148 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

protection. Our prayers, sir, were heard, and they 
were graciously answered. All of us who were en- 
gaged in the struggle must have observed frequent 
instances of a superintending Providence in our favor. 
To that kind Providence we owe this happy oppor- 
tunity of consulting in peace on the means of estab- 
lishing our future national felicity. And have we 
now forgotten that powerful Friend ? or do we im- 
agine we no longer need his assistance ? 

" I have lived, sir, a long time, and the longer I 
live the more convincing proofs I see of this truth — 
that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a 
sparrow can not fall to the ground without his no- 
tice, is it probable that an empire can rise without 
his aid? We have been assured, sir, in the Sacred 
Writings, that, ' except the Lord huild the house they 
labor in vain that huild it J I firmly believe this ; and 
I also believe that without his concurring aid, we 
shall succeed in this political building no better than 
did the builders of Babel. We shall be divided by 
our little, partial, local interests ; our projects will be 
confounded, and we ourselves become a reproach and 
by-word down to future ages. And what is worse, 
mankind may hereafter, from this unfortunate cir- 
cumstance, despair of establishing governments by 
human wisdom, and leave it to chance, war, and 
conquest. 

" I therefore beg leave to move, that henceforth 
prayers, imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its 
blessing on our deliberations, be held in this assem- 



DIVINE INTERPOSITION. 149 

bly every morning before we proceed to business, and 
that one or more of the clergy of this city be re- 
quested to officiate in that service." 

Mr. Madison tells us that ^'Mr. Sherman seconded 
the motion, beseeching Heaven to preside in our coun- 
cil, enlighten our minds with a portion of heavenly 
wisdom, influence our hearts with a love of truth and 
justice, and crown our labors with complete and 
abundant success." Mr. Hamilton, and several others, 
expressed their apprehensions, that, however proper 
such a resolution might have been at the beginning 
of the Convention, it might, at this late day, in the 
first place, bring on it some disagreeable animadver- 
sions; and, in the second, lead the public to believe 
that embarrassments and dissensions within the Con- 
vention had suggested this measure. 

It was answered by Dr. Franklin, Mr. Sherman, 
and others, that the past omission of a duty could 
not justify a further omission ; that the rejection of 
such a proposition would expose the Convention to 
more unpleasant animadversions than the adoption 
of it; and that the alarm out of doors that might be 
excited, for the state of things within would, at least 
be as likely to do good as ill. 

It is said by an able writer that at the close of 
Franklin's address the countenance of Washington 
was radiant with gratitude and delight; nor were the 
members of the Convention less affected. The words 
of the venerable Franklin fell upon their cars with 
weight and authority even greater than that of an 



150 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

oracle in a Roman Senate. A silent admiration su- 
perseded for a moment the expression of that assent 
and approbation which was strongly marked on al- 
most every countenance. The motion for appointing 
a chaplain was instantly put, and carried with a soli- 
tary negative. 

Thus did God impress those great minds, through 
him who was esteemed the mentor of the Convention, 
with their own utter inability to accomplish the great 
work before them without help from Him in whom 
are hid treasures of wisdom and knowledge. 

Thirdly, in the bestowment of light and wisdom upon 
the members of the Convention in answer to prayer. 
After an adjournment of three days, during which 
the members reflected, prayed, and conversed to- 
gether impartially respecting their conflicting views 
and opinions, they again came together, and God's 
minister, the plenipotentiary of Heaven, came also. 
Never did angels look down upon a scene of more 
thrilling interest. These men had passed through 
seven years of toil and sufi'ering, in all of which 
Franklin affirms they all observed frequent instances 
of the superintending providence of God in their 
favor, and received frequent answers to their prayers. 
They are now assembled from all parts of the coun- 
try to form a Constitution, that those liberties, secured 
in the struggle of the Revolution, may be perpetuated 
down to the end of time. Impressed with their need 
of help from God, they, led by their chaplain, looked 
to Him who has said^ "Ask, and ye shall receive." 



DIVINE INTERPOSITION. 151 

"If any man laclr^^isdom let him ask of God." 
God heard and answered their petitions. As soon as 
the chaplain had closed his prayer, and the minutes 
of the last sitting were read, all eyes were turned to 
Franklin, who rose, and, after a few remarks, moved 
a reconsideration of the vote last taken on the or- 
ganization of the Senate. The motion was seconded, 
the vote carried, the former vote rescinded, and, by 
a successful motion and resolution, the Senate was 
organized on the present plan. 

Thus did the framers of that wonderful instrument 
look to God for wisdom ; and God gave them wis- 
dom — wisdom to ^'establish justice^ insure domestic 
tranqidllity , provide for the common defense, promote 
the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty 
to themselves and their posterity.'^ 

Fourthly, in calling forth from those chosen instru- 
ments a public acknowledgment of the Divine help so 
graciously bestowed. The same Divine Spirit which 
watched over these men amid the perils and disci- 
plinary forces of the Revolution, and called them to 
their high responsibilities, and impressed them with 
their need of help from Him who is almighty, and 
imparted the needed aid, now moves them to make 
to mankind a public acknowledgment of the same. 

Dr. Franklin, after the Convention, acknowledged 
the Divine interposition thus : " I must own that I 
have so much faith in the general government of the 
world by Providence, that I can hardly conceive a 
transaction of so much importance to the welfare of 



152 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

millions now in existence, and to exist in the pos- 
terity of a great nation, should be suffered to pass 
■without being in some degree influenced, guided, and 
governed by that omnipotent and beneficent Kuler, 
in whom all inferior spirits live, and move, and have 
their being." 

Washington, in a letter to Lafayette, in February, 
1788, says : "It appears little short of a miracle that 
the delegates from so many States, differing from 
each other, as you know, in their manners, circum- 
stances, and prejudices, should unite in forming a 
system of national government so little liable to well- 
founded objections. 

" We may, with a kind of pious exultation," writes 
Washington to Gov. Trumbull, of Connecticut, July 
20, 1788, "trace the finger of Providence through 
those dark and mysterious events which first induced 
the States to appoint a General Convention, and 
then led them, one after another, by such steps as 
were best calculated to effect the object, into an 
adoption of the system recommended by the General 
Convention, thereby, in all human probabihty, laying 
a lasting foundation for tranquillity and happiness, 
when we had too much reason to fear that confusion 
and misery are coming upon us." 

When he passed through Philadelphia on his way 
to New York to assume the responsibilities of the 
new Government, he was met and welcomed by twenty 
thousand people, with cries of "Long live George 
Washington !" " Long live the Father of his Coun- 



DIVINE INTERPOSITION. 153 

try!" Washington,-Tn return, addressed them as 
follows : " When I contemplate the interposition of 
Providence as it has been visibly manifested in guid- 
ing us through the Revolution, in preparing us for 
the General Government, and in conciliating the good- 
will of the people of America toward one another in 
its adoption, I feel myself oppressed and overwhelmed 
with a sense of the Divine munificence." 

Similar acknowledgments were made by the people. 
Frequent were the processions and ovations in honor 
of the adoption of the Constitution. From the altars 
of the family and the Church there went up to God 
thanksgiving and praise. "In a procession at Phila- 
delphia in honor of the Constitution," says a writer, 
"the clergy formed a conspicuous part, manifesting 
by their attendance a sense of the connection between 
good government and religion. They marched arm 
in arm, to illustrate the general union. Care was 
taken to associate ministers of the most dissimilar 
opinions with each other, to display the promotion of 
Christian charity by free institutions. The rabbi of 
the Jews, with a minister of the Gospel on each side, 
was a most delightful sight. It exhibited the Chris- 
tian equality, not only of Christian denominations, 
but of worthy men of every belief." 

These facts of history we think clearly show that 
the Government of the United States was set up by 
the God of heaven. 



154 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 



CHAPTER Till. 

THE DIVINE PURPOSE IN PLANTING THE AMERI- 
CAN REPUBLIC. 

We regard it of special importance at this time 
that we should clearly understand, as a people, the 
design which God had in planting us as a nation. 
No other nation has such a history. We were shad- 
owed forth by types and symbols, and pointed out by 
prophecy, at different periods, from Moses to the 
Revelator. A whole continent was held in reserve 
for ages as the place of our planting, and the field 
of our operations, while an Omnipotent Providence 
was preparing the world, through the Church and 
other agencies, for the coming event. Surely a na- 
tion with such a history must have been raised up 
for some great and noble purpose. What was that 
purpose ? 

We will first endeavor to define clearly what we 
are to understand by a nation in the true American 
sense. Let us clear our minds of that impious seces- 
sion vagary, that a nation is a heterogeneous, acci- 
dental aggregation of men, or of States held together 
by a sort of " balance of interest " treaty, or contract 
of copartnership, entered into for the purpose of 



THE DIVINE PURPOSE. 155 

establishing and carrying on the hitherto highly-prof- 
itable business of stump speech-making for "Bun- 
combe," securing the spoils of victory in certain an- 
nual games of ballot-box stuffing, and breeding colored 
" chattels " for the shambles of " king cotton." This 
notion of the essential nature and purpose of our na- 
tional existence was for several years entertained by 
many distinguished politicians and leaders of the 
people, and reduced to practice among us ; with what 
effect is apparent from the events of the day. No 
more false or fatal emanation from the bottomless pit 
ever lodged itself in the human understanding; and 
the necessity of dislodging it with the truth seems at 
this time of special importance. This lie has less 
hold on the people to-day than it had a few months 
ago. Let it die, never to live again. 

The truth is, that a nation, in the most rigorous 
scientific definition of the term, is an organized body, 
and by no means a mere aggregation of individual 
men, or independent communities; and so, like every 
other organized body, must, from the very nature of 
things, incorporate its own distinctive force or idea. 
Indeed, it is only by virtue of this distinctive idea 
that it becomes a nation at all. To this merely 
formal statement of the truth, history, irradiated by 
the light of eighteen Christian centuries, adds a fiir 
sublimer derivation and broader scope. It declares 
that in the great epochs of the world the Omnipotent 
Providence confides to a chosen people the revelation 
of a great truth, a great regenerative idea; ^nd that, 



156 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

from theneeforward, that idea becomes for that peo- 
ple the germ of its national Hfe and civilization, its 
soul, without which it could no more be a nation than 
the human body could be a man without the human 
soul. Por in its more excellent soul, a nation is but 
a larger form of humanity, a grander cosmos or re- 
ceptacle of the Divine presence in the world. And 
it is this presence, this fundamental idea, which con- 
stitutes the real substance of the national life, and 
determines the legitimate character of the national 
development and civiHzation. 

The design of our planting as a nation is clearly 
set forth in the nation's "Life Covenant," which bears 
date July 4, 1776, and contains these ever-memorable 
words, then first in the providential unfolding of the 
ages made audible to the ears of mankind: ^^All men 
are created equal, endowed hy their Creator with cer- 
tain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness^ ''America," said the 
great Earl of Chatham, in a memorable debate in 
the English House of Lords in 1770, "was settled 
upon ideas of liberty." Doubtless the words of the 
wise old statesman were true. "America was set- 
tled upon ideas of liberty;" but not of liberty only. 
Ideas of a still broader scope and grander aim 
wrought silently but strenuously in that settlement; 
ideas originating in the advent of the Divine Man- 
hood into the world, and the sublime transfigurations 
thereby eJBfected in the status and history of the race ; 
ideas of the equal dignity and worth of the common 



THE DIVINE PURPOSE. 157 

humanity, in its own spiritual substance, as the be- 
gotten of God, the bearer of his image, the continent 
of his presence in the world, and by right of its own 
nativity endowed with the faculty of ''life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness." In no merely pagan 
age, under no merely pagan forms of civilization, 
could this idea have been evolved. All the previous 
ages were necessary to the development and the 
coming of that " fullness of time." 

What less than this idea of the consubstantial 
equality of all men, of man in his own substance as 
man, without regard to the accidents of birth, for- 
tune, education, or complexion, could have supplied 
a base broad enough upon which to found a nation- 
ality whose membership from the beginning, as was 
clearly pointed out by the prophets, should embrace 
the outcasts and expatriated of all other races and 
nations of men, and to whom should- be given a 
whole continent as the work-field? Any thing less 
than this would have been out of harmony with the 
great redemptive plan, and would have been unworthy 
of a God. 

Man is God's most sacred trust to this world; his 
value is derived from his relations, from his divinity. 
Would you properly estimate humanity, you must 
look at man in his relations to God and the eternal 
world. It is a fundamental doctrine of our repub- 
lican government that man is above nature; that, by 
virtue of his original endowment and affiliation to 
the Eternal Father, he is superior to every other 



158 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

created thing. Governments, and ordinances, and 
institutions, and usages are his servants, and not 
his masters. He has but one master, and that is 
God. On the morning of his creation the Author 
of his being said to him, " Subdue the earth and 
have dominion over it;" thus affirming man's high 
capability, as well as the fact that the world was 
made for his use. Man, in compliance with the 
Divine command, has shown his capahility by oper- 
ating upon the whole line of cause and effect, by 
discovering and bringing out the hidden forces of 
nature, and combining them into such relations as 
to bring about new results; thus acquiring a sort of 
omnipotency over inert matter, making the forces of 
the material world his servants. Such is humanity; 
therefore it is to be lifted up — all lifted up — ^not the 
upper stratum only, but the whole, from base to dome. 
When thus enlarged, developed, elevated, man is to 
be thoroughly trusted — ^trusted because capable of 
self-government. This is the Divine idea, and the 
American idea as well; for we stand in contrast 
with the world in holding and teaching it. 

The masses, up to the time of the Savior's advent, 
were held in contempt. Among all the great states- 
men and philosophers of the world the poor were 
looked upon as the drudges of society, the append- 
ages of luxury, the convenient tools of the ambitious, 
the material to be used in war. It never entered 
into the mind of the reformer who was wont to effect 
some great change, or the philosopher or statesman 



THE DIVINE PURPOSE. 159 

who had conceived the idea of building up a State, 
of beginning with the poor. It was supposed that 
the only way of reaching the world was to reach it 
through the few who constituted the wealthy and 
aristocratic, and who alone possessed influence. But 
when the great Teacher came, he laid the foundations 
of his plan for lifting the world out of its lapsed 
condition, below all influence, proclaiming that "he 
came to preach the Gospel to the poor; to heal the 
broken-hearted; to open the prison to them that were 
bound; to proclaim liberty to the captives; to set at 
liberty them that are bound." Thus did our Lord 
teach the equal dignity and^w^orth of man, and show 
that the fundamental interest of society is found in 
the blessing and upraising of the masses. 

This is the radical idea of our republican govern- 
ment. A government of the people must have a 
foundation as broad as the people themselves, while 
it proceeds upon the great truth that every man is 
equal to his fellow-man. This di\dne idea regarding 
humanity was never incorporated into any system of 
government, from the time of the ancient Hebrew 
Repubhc to that of the United States, in which it 
constituted the great central idea. All the great 
poets, from Homer, the father of poetry, and histo- 
rians, from Herodotus, the father of history, down 
to a period but little anterior to the establishment of 
our own Government, spoke of the poor — that is, of 
the masses — as the "servile," "the plebeian," "the 
vulgar throng," and as being outside of society. 



160 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

Even the Churcli did not seem to apprehend that 
which the Savior so plainly taught relative to the 
equal dignity and worth of humanity, because of its 
spiritual substance. 

He who first discovered and applied this great 
principle in the Church, after the Reformation, was 
John Wesley, who commenced his mission among the 
colliers of England, and worked up to the highest 
stratum of society. To us it seemed especially prov- 
idential, that a great religious movement, embracing 
the same great idea, should have been inaugurated in 
the Church, thirty-seven years before the same gen- 
erative truth was incorporated in the new Republic. 
Great was the influence which the first event exerted 
upon the latter. It is the saying of a distinguished 
divine, " that the government of the world is in the 
interests of the Church." The truth of this remark 
is seen in that providential procession of passing 
events, which we see marching to the beat of time, 
preserving their right order, and appearing each just 
when wanted, not before or after, and contributing in 
one grand harmonious whole to the spread and tri- 
umph of the truth. 

From the facts presented in this chapter, it is 
evident that the Divine purpose in planting us as a 
nation is in harmony with the Divine purpose in re- 
demption, and in the planting of the Christian Church. 
This we should expect, as the same Hand which 
redeemed the world and planted the Church, also 
established our free Government. " Only upon that 



THE DIVINE PURPOSE. 161 

which is in itself durable," says James M'Kaye, 
" only upon the permanent element of human nature, 
the equal dignity and worth of ma^nhood in its own 
spiritual substance can any nationality or social polity 
be founded, which shall at once be permanent in its 
own nature, and admit of a free development in all 
of its conditions. This is the groiKid of Christianity, 
and the ground upon which God formed our free 
nation. 

But it is asked how we reconcile these views of the 
Divine purpose, and nature of the Government, with 
the existence of chattel slavery in the nation? We 
answer, slavery was always in direct and positive 
violation of the life covenant of the nation, and 
never was sanctioned by the Constitution. That im- 
mortal document was never dishonored by the inser- 
tion into it of that hateful word slavery^ which 
belongs to the vocabulary of the pit. At the time 
of the adoption of the Constitution there was a gen- 
eral desire and expectation that slavery would soon 
cease ; hence the " builders of the Constitution so 
framed it, that, while it knew how to steer round 
slavery while it existed, it should be whole and per- 
fect when slavery ceased." Slavery never existed in 
the Constitution, nor by virtue of it. Lawyers of the 
slave States have decided again and again that slav- 
ery is a local institution, and can exist only by 
special local structure. The Constitution is just 
what we should expect it to be, originating at the 

time it did. All the political idoas and moral influ- 

U 



162 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

ences of that day were against slavery, and in favor 
of freedom. The people had just broken the yoke of 
oppression from their own necks, and were not likely 
to be in sympathy with oppression. 

That we are correct in these views, and that they 
accord with the facts of history, we prove by the 
testimony of the statesmen of those times, as admit- 
ted by Mr. Stephens, the Yice-President of the so- 
called " Southern Confederacy." Mr. Stephens says ; 
" The prevailing ideas of Mr. Jefferson, and most of 
the leading statesmen at the time of the formation 
of the old Constitution, were, that the enslavement 
of the African was in violation of the laws of nature ; 
that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and 
politically. It was an evil they knew not well how 
to deal with ; but the general opinion of the men of 
that day was, that somehow or other, in the order 
of Providence, the institution would be evanescent, 
and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated 
in the Constitution, was the prevailing idea at the 
time." Mr. Stephens adds : " Those ideas were fun- 
damentally wrong. They rested upon the assump- 
tion of the equality of races. This was an error." 
Thus, Mr. Stephens, while he condemns the views of 
the fathers, yet admits that "most of the leading 
statesmen, at the time of the formation of the Con- 
stitution, were opposed to slavery, believing it to be 
a violation of the laws of nature, and wrong, socially, 
morally, and politically." 

But let these great minds appear in the light of 



THE DIVINE PURPOSE. 168 

their own testimony. Washington, the Father of his 
country, says, in a letter to John F. Mercer, wliich 
was written September 9, 1786 : '' I never mean, un- 
less some particular circumstance should compel me 
to it, to possess another slave by purchase, it being 
among my first ivishes to see some plan adopted in 
this country by which slavery may be abolished by 
law." In a letter to Robert Morris, written in April, 
of the same year, he says : " I can only say that 
there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely 
than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of 
slavery. But there is only one proper and efiectual 
mode by which it can be done, and that is by legis- 
lative authority; and this, as far as my suffrage will 
go, shall never be wanting." 

In a letter to Lafayette, April 5, 1783, he says : 
" The scheme, my dear Marquis, which you propose, 
as a precedent, to encourage the emancipation of the 
black people in this country from the state of bond- 
age in which they are held, is a striking evidence of 
the benevolence of your heart. I shall be happy to 
join you in so laudable a work, but will defer going 
into the details of the business till I see you." La- 
fayette purchased an estate in the colony of Cay- 
enne, with a view of educating and freeing the 
slaves upon it. Washington, in a letter alluding to 
it, says : " The benevolence of your heart, my dear 
Marquis, is so conspicuous on all occasions, that I 
never wonder at any fresh proofs of it; but your 
late purchase of an estate in the colony of Cayenne, 



164 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

with the view of emancipating the slaves on it, is a 
generous and noble proof of your humanity. Would 
to God a like spirit might diffuse itself generally into 
the minds of this country !" The uttering of such 
sentiments, a few years since, in the South would 
have introduced Washington to a coat of tar and 
feathers, if not the scaffold and hangman's rope. 

The author of the Declaration of Independence, 
Mr. Jefferson, in his Notes on Virginia, says : '' There 
must, doubtless, be an unhappy influence on the 
manners of our people produced by the existence of 
slavery among us. The whole commerce between 
master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most 
boisterous passions — the most unremitting despotism 
on the one part, and degrading submission on the 
other. Our children see this and learn to imitate it; 
for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the 
germ of all education in him. From his cradle to 
his grave he is learning to do what he sees others 
do. If a parent could find no motive, either in his 
philanthropy or his self-love, for restraining the in- 
temperance of passion toward his slave, it should al- 
ways be a sufficient one that his child is present. 
But, generally, it is not sufficient. The parent 
storms ; the child looks on, catches the lineaments 
of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of 
smaller slaves, gives a loose rein to the worst pas- 
sions; and thus nursed, educated, and daily exer- 
cised in tyranny, can not but be stamped with it by 
odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy 



THE DIVINE PURPOSE. 165 

who can retain his manners and morals undepraved 
by such circumstances. And with what execration 
should the statesman be loaded, who, permitting one 
half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the 
other, transforms those into despots, and these into 
enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and 
the amor patrice of the other ; for if a slave can have 
a country in this world, it must be any other in pref- 
erence to that in which he is born to live and labor 
for another. With the morals of the people their in- 
dustry is destroyed; for in a warm climate no man 
will labor for himself who can make another labor 
for him. This is true, that of the proprietors of 
slaves, a very small proportion are ever seen to labor. 
And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure 
when we have removed their only firm basis — a con- 
viction in the minds of the people that their liberties 
are of the gift of God — that they are not to be vio- 
lated but with his wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my 
country when I remember that God is just ; that his 
justice can not sleep forever; that, considering num- 
bers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution 
of the wheels of fortune, an exchange of situation is 
among possible events ; that it may become probable 
by supernatural interference. The Almighty has no 
attribute which can take sides with us in such a con- 
test'' On August 7, 1775, in a letter to Mr. Price, 
of London, in speaking of the opposition to emanci- 
pation, he remarks : " You may find here and there 
an opponent of your doctrine, as 3'ou may find here 



1(36 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC, 

and there a robber and murderer ; but in no greater 
number." Dr. Franklin says of slavery : '' Slavery 
is an atrocious debasement of human nature." Near 
the close of his eventful life Eranklin, in 1790, in 
the name of, and on behalf of the first abolition so- 
ciety of which he was president, drafted a memorial 
to the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States. Below w^e present this first anti- 
slavery petition to Congress, which threw South 
Carolina — ever the hot-bed of toryism — into such a 
furor : 

'' Your memorialists, particularly engaged in at- 
tending to the distresses arising from slavery, believe 
it to be their indispensable duty to present this sub- 
ject to your notice. They have observed with real 
satisfaction that many important and salutary powers 
are vested in you for promoting the welfare and se- 
curing the blessings of liberty to the people of tho 
United States ; and as they conceive that these bless- 
ings ought rightfully to be administered, without dis- 
tinction of color, to all descriptions of people, so 
they indulge themselves in the pleasing expectation 
that nothing which can be done for the unhappy ob- 
jects of their care will be either omitted or delayed. 
From a persuasion that equal hberty was originally 
the portion, and is still the birthright of all men; 
and influenced by the strong ties of humanity and the 
principle of their institutions, your memorialists con- 
ceive themselves bound to use all justifiable endeav- 
ors to loosen the bonds of slavery, and promote the 



THE DIVINE PURPOSE. 167 

general enjoyment of the blessings of freedom. 
Under these impressions they earnestly entreat your 
attention to the subject of slavery; that you will be 
pleased to countenance the restoration to liberty of 
those unhappy men who, alone in this land of free- 
dom, are degraded into perpetual bondage, and 
who, in the general joy of surrounding freemen, are 
groaning in servile subjection ; that you will devise 
means for removing this inconsistency of character 
from the American people; that you will promote 
mercy and justice toward this distressed race; and 
that you will step to the very verge of the power 
vested in you for discovering every species of traJSic 
in the persons of our fellow-men." 

That brilliant statesman, Alexander Hamilton, as 
early as 1774, in a letter to an American Tory, thus 
discourses upon the natural rights of man : " The 
fundamental source of all your errors, sophisms, and 
false reasonings, is a total ignorance of the natural 
rights of mankind. Were you once to become ac- 
quainted with these, you could never entertain a 
thought that all men are not by nature entitled to 
equal privileges. You Avould be convinced that nat- 
ural liberty is the gift of the beneficent Creator to 
the whole human race, and that civil liberty is 
founded on that." 

Mr. Madison, when the abolition of the slave-trade 
was under consideration, thus speaks : " The dictates 
of humanity, the principles of the people, the na- 
tion's safety and happiness, and prudent policy, 



1(38 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

require that by expressing a national disapprobation of 
the trade, we may destroy it and save our country 
from the imbecihty ever attendant on a country filled 
with slaves." When framing the Constitution he said : 
"It is wrong to admit into the Constitution the idea 
that there can he property in man. The first question 
that offers itself is, whether the general form and 
aspect of the Government be strictly republican. It 
is evident that no other form would be reconcilable 
with the genius of the people of America, and with 
the fundamental principles of the Revolution, or with 
the honorable determination which animates every 
votary of freedom to rest all our political experiments 
on the capacity of mankind for self-government." 

John Adams thus discourses upon the " sum of all 
villainies :^^ "It is among the evils of slavery that it 
taints the very sources of moral principle. It estab- 
lishes false estimates of virtue and vice ; for what can 
be more false and more heartless than this doctrine 
which makes the first and holiest rights of humanity 
to depend upon the color of the skin? It perverts 
human reason, and induces men endowed with logical 
powers to maintain that slavery is sanctioned by the 
Christian religion; that slaves are happy and con- 
tented in their condition ; that between master and 
slave there are ties of mutual attachment and affec- 
tion; that the virtues of the master are refined and 
exalted by the degradation of the slave, while, at the 
same time, they vent execrations upon the slave-trade, 
curse Britain for having given them slaves, burn at 



THE DIVINE PURPOSE. 169 

the stake negroes convicted of crimes for the terror 
of the example, and writhe in agony at the very 
mention of human rights as applicable to men of 
color." 

The eloquent and immortal Patrick Henry, whose 
burning love of patriotism broke forth in the Conti- 
nental Congress at the very commencement of the 
Revolution, in those stunning words, " Give me lib- 
erty, or give me death;" has left us his views of hu- 
man oppression: "Is it not a little surprising that 
the professors of Christianity, whose chief excellence 
consists in softening the human heart, in cherishing 
and improving its finer feelings, should encourage a 
practice repugnant to the first impressions of right 
and wrong? What adds to the wonder is, that this 
abominable practice has been introduced in the most 
enhghtened ages. Times that seem to have preten- 
sions to boast of high improvements in the arts and 
sciences, and refined morality, have brought into gen- 
eral use, and guarded by many laws, a species of 
violence and tyranny which our more rude and bar- 
barous, but more honest, ancestors detested. Is it 
not amazing that, at a time when the rights of hu- 
manity are defined and understood with precision in 
a country above all others fond of liberty, that in such 
an age, and in such a country, we find men professing 
a religion the most mild, humane, gentle, and gen- 
erous, adopting such a principle, as repugnant to hu- 
manity as it is inconsistent with the Bible and de- 
structive to liberty? Every thinking, honest man, 
15 



170 THE AxMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

rejects it in speculation. It is a debt we owe to the 
purity of our religion to show that it is at variance 
with that law which warrants slavery. We ought to 
lament and deplore the necessity of holding our fel- 
low-men in bondage." 

Is it to be supposed that men with such views of 
human rights and human slavery, would, immediately 
after the great struggle for independence, form a 
Constitution sanctioning slavery? Slavery was re- 
garded as an evil to be endured for a time only. It 
was waning, and was expected soon to die, and the 
Constitution was framed under this impression. Mr. 
Stephens recently charged, as we have seen, that there 
was a blunder made in the Constitution of our coun- 
try in its failing to recognize slavery, and in making 
liberty universal ; thus admitting the grand fact that 
that immortal instrument, as held by the North, em- 
bodies the views of those who framed it; and that 
those views are unmistakably in favor of liberty to 
all. It is a matter of gratitude to Almighty God 
that it is so clearly attested by evidence that the 
views of the great men of that age, as well as the 
spirit of the age, harmonizes so perfectly with the 
Divine purpose in establishing the United States of 
America. 

It was the Divine will that the new nationality 
should keep its life covenant by expanding, by grow- 
ing, in accordance with the law of its own organic 
life. This great fundamental, this central, this gen- 
erative idea, was to be developed and promulgated. 



THE DIVINE PURPOSE. 171 

It was to be demonstrated to other governments, to 
all people. Our mission in this respect was import- 
ant, for it was world-wide as that of the Church. 
We were to show that man as man has the inborn 
capability of self-government. 

God committed this high trust to us as a nation, 
and to none else. Our national life was based upon 
it, grew out of it, and our continued existence de- 
pended upon its continual development. We were to 
move right on, conforming all the nation's acts to 
those proclaimed truths, "All men are created equal, 
and endowed by their Creator with the inalienable 
rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." 

We were to throw this new. Divine life-element 
into the literature of the world; thenceforth philoso- 
phers, and historians, and poets were to philosophize, 
and write, and sing of a great nation, whose aristoc- 
racy, whose ruling class was the great body of the 
people — an empire of sovereigns. We were to give 
a new and unheard-of dignity to labor, by throwing 
around it and into it this new idea of humanity. As 
the government was to be of the people, labor and 
not "cotton" henceforth was to be king. We were 
to lay siege to that mighty power which girded 
Babylon with its massive walls; that reared the 
pyramids; that built the Parthenon; that stormed 
the walls of ocean-girt Tyre, the "mistress of seas," 
and give to it a dignity which had not before charac- 
terized it. This was to follow as the result of pro- 
mulgating the great truth of the equal dignity of 



172 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

man. In monarchies it is honorable to do a worthy 
act because the monarch does it. Bj the same law 
is labor made honorable in the United States. He 
who labors is one of the rulers of the land; there- 
fore it is honorable to labor. This gives to labor a 
new force which it never before had. America seems 
destined, if in no other way, to revolutionize the 
world by her new inventions of time-saving, labor- 
saving, and expense-saving machinery. *'Were Aris- 
totle and Plato," says Bancroft, ''to come back to 
our world nothing would surprise them more than 
the contrast between the work-shops of Athens and 
New York." Already have we originated the tele- 
graph, by which, in a few years, we shall be able to 
hold daily converse with the world. 

Our own nation was to be an asylum for the 
oppressed of all other nations. Here the prophet 
declared they should come as doves to their windows, 
and here they were to receive a cordial welcome, 
find a home, and have inheritance. We were to 
demonstrate to the kingdoms into which the old 
Roman Empire was divided — in the whole of which 
there exists the unhappy union of Church and State, 
symbolized by the mingling of the clay and iron in 
the ten toes of the image — the advantages of a 
separation of the Church from the State, and the 
great practical good accruing to both from the volun- 
tary Scriptural principle in sustaining the Church. 

Our mission, in short, as a nation, should only 
be accomplished when the last despot should be 



I 



THE DIVINE PURPOSE. 173 

dethroned, the last chain of oppression broken, the 
dignity and equality of redeemed humanity every- 
where acknowledged, republican government every- 
where established, and the American flag — that 
solemn national signal; that safeguard of liberty, 
devised by the Rutledges, the Pinckneys, the Jays, 
the Frankhns, the Hamiltons, the Adamses; that 
flag which is expressive of American ideas, American 
history, American feelings, American liberty; that 
flag under which the immortal chieftain of liberty, 
Washington, and his deathless conquerors marched 
to victory and liberty — when that flag should wave 
over every land and encircle the world in its majestic 
folds, then, and not till then, should the nation have 
accomplished the purpose for which it was established 
by the God of heaven. This was not to be the work 
of a day nor a year, and yet every year should mark 
its increasing progress. 



174 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 



CHAPTEE IX. 

OUR APOSTASY AS A NATION. 

Our apostasy is seen in our failure to carry out 
the Divine purpose for which we were raised up as a 
nation. In the preceding chapter we hare seen how 
great that purpose was, and the way in which it was 
to be carried out. Our ''covenant of life^^ has been 
greatly weakened, if not absolutely broken. We have 
not gone on in our life-work, as a nation, of demon- 
strating that " all men are created equal, and endowed 
by their Creator with the inalienable rights of life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." We have 
grown, 'tis true; but our growth, the increase of our 
population, and the enlargement of our domain, not 
having been in accordance with the law of our own 
organic life, has made our strength weakness. 

"The more I study the relations of the Christian 
religion with the institutions of government and law," 
says that clear thinker and able writer, Dr. Isaac J. 
Allen, of the Ohio State Journal, "the more pro- 
foundly am I convinced that any departure from, 
or violation of, the principles and precepts of Chris- 
tianity is in just so much a weakening of human 
institutions." Our failure to develop those God- 



OUR APOSTASY. 175 

given ideas of the equal dignity and worth of the 
common humanity, in its own spiritual substance, as 
the begotten of God, was itself a "departure from 
and violation of the principles and precepts of Chris- 
tianity," which induced national imbecility. For as 
surely as the giant oak of the forest, which has 
groAvn for a thousand years, begins to wither and 
die the moment it ceases to obey the vital force 
contained in the germ from whence it sprung, so 
surely does a people begin to fall into ruin the mo- 
ment it ceases to develop the fundamental idea of 
its own nationality to work out its own appropriate 
civilization and history. 

" Civilization is not a thing — a chattel to be bought 
and sold; nor yet a fixture to be negotiated by bond 
and mortgage; neither can it be transferred from 
people to people by international treaty. It has no 
necessary connection with wealth and luxurious splen- 
dor; wickedness pampered, and ignorance gilded, can 
not serve to raise one above his poor but virtuous 
neighbor ; filling the wigwam of the savage with gold, 
and robing him with purple and fine linen, could 
work no change in the measure of his civilization. 
Such, then, civilization is not; but civilization is the 
complete development of man in all his appropriate 
relations to the world. It is the habitual and uni- 
versal practice of those humanizing principles which 
bring ' peace on earth and good- will toward man.' 
It is the expansion and elevation of all the natural 
powers and capacities of man considered as a social 



176 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

being, and as such the subject of civil government; 
in a word, it is making him perfectly a man." ^ 

That which civilization is not, and which, as a 
people, we knew it was not, we have labored to make 
it. We have been practicing upon the principle that 
civilization is a " chattel, a thing to be bought and 
sold " at will. We have not been found in the " ha- 
bitual and universal practice of those humanizing prin- 
ciples which bring ' peace on earth and good- will to- 
ward man.' " We have not gone on laboring for the 
" expansion and elevation of all the natural powers 
and capacities of man considered as a social being, 
and as such the subject of civil government." But 
we " have gone in the way of Cain, and run greedily 
after the error of Balaam for a reward." We have 
fallen, and great has been our fall. Would we see 
the hight from which we have fallen, and the depth 
of infamy into which we have plunged, we have only 
to institute a comparison between the views held by 
our fathers regarding human liberty, and those of our 
own time. 

That which the. fathers regarded as a great evil, 
and which they hoped to see extirpated in their day, 
we, their unworthy children, have cherished, pro- 
nounced divine, and developed a scheme of human 
degradation in which a human soul is held bereft, 
not only of all civil liberty and rights, but of all its 
natural attributes, is held to be not a person^ but a 

* Christianity in its Relation to Civil Polity. By I. J. Allen, A. M., 
M. D. 



OUR APOSTASY. 177 

piece of property, noT to possess even a human life, 
but only that of a beast, and as a beast is kept for 
breeding other beasts for the public markets of the 
world; a scheme which rolls back the civilization of 
two thousand years, blots out the central idea of 
Christianity, and reestablishes a worse than pa.gan 
barbarism; and all this was done in the face of the 
great announcement made more than eighteen hund- 
red years ago of God's all-beneficent intention to re- • 
deem, emancipate, and glorify the nature of his off- 
spring — human nature. For what other meaning is 
there in the Divine assumption of this nature in its 
humblest form? 

The enormity of this scheme did not consist so 
much in the outrage perpetrated against the liberties 
of the enslaved, atrocious as that was, as that in their 
persons, an irretrievable offense was committed against 
our common humanity, and therefore against the root 
idea of our nationality and civilization, as well as 
against God's great redemptive plan for lifting up 
the world out of its fallen condition. This enormous 
perfidy, by the law of accretion, drew about it other 
wrongs, such as a national irreverence for God and 
his laws, a disregard of the Christian Sabbath and 
the institutions of religion ; a want of national integ- 
rity, and a vast system of demagogism, intemper- 
ance, profanity, and licentiousness. None of these 
latter wrongs, however, was nationalized, while slavery 
received the sanction of the Government, and brought 
the whole power of the nation to aid in perpetrating 



178 THE AMERICAN EEPUBLIC. 

those deeds of darkness which were fast making our 
national life and history " a devil's chaos instead of 
God's cosmos." 

The national heart became so dark and depraved 
that in parts of the body-politic all fealty and pa- 
triotism were eaten out, all sense of the most sacred 
obligations and human rights extinguished, so as to 
make the most atrocious villainies appear like inno- 
cence, and treason against the grandest fabric of hu- 
man liberty ever erected on earth, like the noblest of 
civic virtues. 

Dr. Smith, of South Carolina, in referring to the 
grounds of objection entertained by the South against 
the Government, and their reason for seeking its de- 
struction, thus speaks of that wonderful instrument, 
the Declaration of Independence, which we have 
called our Life Covenant : '' What is the dilEculty, 
and what the remedy ? Not in the election of Repub- 
lican Presidents? No. Not in the non-execution of 
the Fugitive bill ? No. But it lies back of all these. 
It is found in that atheistic, Red Republican doctrine 
of the Declaration of Indeperidence ! Till that is 
trampled under foot there can he no 'peace. ^^ How 
would the utterance of such treasonable sentiments 
have been received in those days when the immortal 
Henry was heard in the Assembly of the Old Domin- 
ion to exclaim, " Give me liberty, or give me death !'' 

There is perhaps no stronger evidence of our na- 
tional apostasy, than the fact that men occupying 
positions of trust, and power, and honor, in the na- 



OUR APOSTASY. 179 

tion, were, while sworn to support the Constitution, 
engaged for a whole generation in laying their plans 
for the nation's destruction. These acts of treason 
were so deep, and dark, and infamous, that they 
would hardly have been credited, had not these vil- 
lains, by their own confessions, established their 
truth. Rhett said, in regard to the destruction of 
the Union : " It is a matter which has been gather- 
ing head for more than thirty years." Mr. Packer 
said: "It has been gradually culminating for a long 
series of years." Mr. Inglis said : " Most of us have 
had this matter under consideration for the past thirty 
years." Mr. Keitt said: "I have been engaged in 
this movement ever since I entered public life." 
Why all this effort to seek the nation's life ? Why 
toil for thirty years to destroy the temple of liberty ? 
Mr. Stephens, the Vice-President of the Southern 
Confederacy, answers, that it is because the fathers 
made liberty, and not slavery, the corner-stone of the 
Republic. Dr. Smith affirms that the difficulty is in 
the atheistic doctrine of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, which must be trampled under foot in order 
to have peace. Strange apostasy, this ! 

There is truth in what Mr. Jefferson affirmed, '' that 
the man must be a prodigy who could retain his 
manners and morals undepraved under the corrupting 
influence of slavery." How few in the South have 
escaped that terrible depravity induced by the slave 
power ! How strangely these sentiments of the slave 
oligarchy contrast with those of the fathers and 



180 THE AMERICAN REPUBLlltJ. 

earlier statesmen of the Republic ! They have spoken 
once ; let them speak again. Hear what they say : 

Washington : " My first wish is to see slavery in 
this country abolished by law." 

Patrick Henry . " I beheve a time will come 
when an opportunity will be afforded to abolish 
this lamentable evil. If not effected in our day, 
let us transmit to our descendants our abhorrence of 
slavery." 

Thomas Jefferson Randolph: "How can an honor- 
able mind, a patriot and lover of his country, bear to 
see this Ancient Dominion, rendered illustrious by the 
noble devotion and patriotism of her sons in the cause 
of liberty, converted into one grand menagerie, whose 
men are to be reared for the market, like oxen for 
the shambles?" 

Thomas H. Benton : " My opposition to slavery dates 
from 1804, when I was a student of law, in the State 
of Tennessee, and studied the subject of African 
slavery in an American book, a Virginia book, Tuck- 
er's Edition of Blackstone." 

De Witt Clinton, the author of the great system of 
internal improvements : " Would not all the despot- 
isms of ancient and modern times have vanished into 
air, if the natural equality of mankind had been prop- 
erly understood and practiced? This declares that 
the same measure of justice ought to be measured 
out to all men, without regard to adventitious ine- 
qualities, and the intellectual and physical disparities, 
which proceed from inexplicable causes." 



OUR APOSTASY. 181 

Major-General ^Jo^seph Warren : " Personal free- 
dom is the natural right of every man; and no man, 
or body of men, can, without being guilty of flagrant 
injustice, claim a right to dispose of the persons or 
acquisitions of any other man, or body of men, unless 
it can be proved that such right has risen from some 
compact between the parties in which it has been 
explicitly and freely granted." 

Senator Benton makes the following beautiful allu- 
sion to that great statesman, Henry Clay : " On one 
occasion I saw Henry Clay rise higher than I thought 
I ever saw him before; it was when, in the debate 
on the admission of California, a dissolution was ap- 
prehended if slavery were not carried into this Terri- 
tory, where it never was. Then Mr. Clay, rising, 
loomed colossally in the Senate of the United States ; 
declaring, as he rose, that for no earthly purpose, no 
earthly object, could he carry slavery into places 
where it did not exist before. It was a great and 
proud day for Mr. Clay, toward the latter days of his 
life, and if an artist could have been there to catch 
his expression, as he uttered that sentiment, with its 
reflex on his face, and his countenance beaming with 
firmness of purpose, it would have been a glorious 
moment in which to transmit him to posterity — his 
countenance all alive and luminous with the ideas 
that beat in his bosom. That was a proud day. I 
could have wished that I had spoken the same words. 
I speak them now, telling you they were his, and 
alopting them as my own." 



182 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

As late as 1832 Governor M'Dowell used the 
following language in the Legislature of Virginia : 
"Sir, you may place the slave where you please; 
you may dry up to your utmost the fountains of his 
feelings, the springs of his thought; you may close 
up his mind's every avenue of knowledge, and cloud 
it over with artificial night; you may yoke him to 
your labors as the ox, which liveth only to work and 
worketh only to live; you may put him under any 
process which, without destroying his value as a slave, 
will debase and crush him as a rational being; you 
may do this, and the idea that he was horn to he free 
will survive it all. It is allied to his hope of immor- 
tality; it is the ethereal part of his nature which 
oppression can not rend; it is a torch, lit up in his 
soul by the hand of Deity, and never meant to be 
extinguished by the hand of man." 

The apostasy of the Church in the southern por- 
tion of the nation was as marked as that of the civil 
power. Slavery seems to have destroyed those prin- 
ciples of truth which, when taken away, leave the 
Church a whitened sepulcher. It has proved the 
bane of every virtuous impulse and the nurse of 
every vicious thought. " Slavery," says Beecher, 
"has dragged the priests from the altar. It has 
put false fire thereon, and in the lurid light of that 
fire it has read God's Word backward, and made the 
charter of Hberty for the world to be the charter 
of despotism. Never was the foul virus and bitter- 
ness of slavery shown before as it has been in the 



OUR APOSTASY. 183 

prostration of the_JCliurches of the South, and the 
utter apostasy of the ministers of the Gospel belong- 
ing to them." 

In the slave States the testimony of all the 
Churches, in an early day, was against oppression 
and in favor of freedom; but under the baneful 
influence of slavery it has been entirely reversed. 
That which, in the early history of the Republic, 
she pronounced a great evil, and for the extirpation 
of which she pledged her earnest prayers and un- 
ceasing toils, she came to regard as a great blessing, 
a thing divine, which it was her duty to " conserve 
and perpetuate." Says the Rev. Dr. Plumer, of New 
Orleans, a man of note in the South: "The great 
providential trust of the South is to conserve and 
perpetuate the institution of domestic slavery. Let 
us take our stand on the highest moral ground, and 
proclaim to all the world that we hold this trust from 
God. In defending it, to the South is assigned the 
high position of defending before all nations the cause 
of religion and all truth.^^ With M'Kaye, in his 
"Birth and Death of Nations," we ask, What is this 
but the ravings of the madness and dementation en- 
gendered by slavery? Think of the condition of a 
people whose ministers have become so profoundly 
unconscious of their own utter demoralization ! Min- 
isters and laymen engaged readily in slave-breeding, 
selling, and buying, claiming the Divine sanction of 
their conduct. 

The Churches in the free States did not entirely 



184 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

escape this apostatizing influence. Every means was 
used to prevent the Northern Churches from sending 
forth any condemnatory declarations of slavery. To 
speak against slavery or pray for the oppressed was 
to meddle with politics — to be an abolitionist. The 
Methodist Episcopal Church, which from the begin- 
ning had borne unmistakable testimony against the 
great evil of slavery in her book of Discipline, was 
greatly agitated by the aggressions of the slave 
power. The Northern portion of the Church main- 
tained its ground, and escaped apostasy. Not so 
with the Southern portion; that apostatized from 
God and truth, bowed before the dragon, gracefully 
received his yoke, seceded from the old Church, and 
proclaimed slavery a divine institution, and pronounced 
the Declaration of Independence an ^'atheistic and 
Red-Republican doctrine, which should be trampled 
under foot." In no one of the Southern Churches 
was the apostasy so complete as in the Methodist 
Church South. So low had she fallen, and so thor- 
oughly had she become imbued with the spirit of the 
old serpent, that her clergy, years before the rebellion 
broke out, were found in mobs, by which persons from 
the North, on the mere suspicion of being opposed 
to slavery, were seized, and without the form of a 
trial hung till dead. 



THE NATION OPPRESSED. 185 



CHAPTER X. 

THE OPPRESSION OP THE NATION BY THE SLAVE 
POWER. 

" American slavery is the vilest that ever saw the 
sun; it is the sum of all villainies," said Wesley; 
and this statement is fully sustained by the facts of 
history. No form of despotism which has ever ex- 
isted among men has equaled the slave power. 
Slavery, as a system of tyranny, is older than that 
of Rome symbolized by the "red dragon." Far back 
as we can trace the history of nations we find the 
existence of slavery in some form. We find it in 
Egypt, Greece, and Rome, and in more modern na- 
tions. But in no nation, ancient or modern, heathen 
or Christian, has it assumed a form so cruel and de- 
grading as in the United States of America. 

The enslavement of the Hebrews in Egypt, which 

commenced B. C. 1604, continued up to 1491, a 

period of one hundred and thirteen years ; and, as it 

was, was mild in comparison of American slavery. 

The Hebrews in Egypt were held by the Government, 

and were employed in the service of the Government, 

without reference to the will of individuals. They 

were not claimed, or owned, or required to serve 
1(> 



186 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

individuals, or distributed on farms or among families, 
as the property of individuals. They were enslaved 
as a nation, and not as individuals. They formed a 
separate community of their own in the land of 
Goshen, of which they held exclusive possession; 
where they lived in permanent houses, and had their 
own forms of law; for the scepter never departed 
from Judah till Shiloh came. They were a sort of 
province of Egypt, and tributary to it. None but 
adult males rendered service : there is no account of 
the bond-service of females. The mother of Moses 
hid him three months, and afterward she contracted 
to nurse him for wages. Ex. ii, 9. None of these 
privileges belong to the slave system among us ; it 
has no such ameliorating traits. 

Slavery among the Romans, cruel as it was, is far 
surpassed by American slavery. There was no stat- 
ute of the Roman law by which the slave was forbid- 
den the use of letters. He was not debarred from 
any branch of knowledge which his circumstances 
would enable him to pursue. In nearly all the slave 
States in this country slaves are prevented, by se- 
vere laws, from learning or improving their minds — 
a barbarism unknown in heathen lands. 

Our laws prohibit emancipation. In a few of the 
States it may be brought about by special legislation 
for special cases. In heathen Rome emancipation 
was not only allowed, but such were the laws that 
it was easily brought about. There were twelve dif- 
ferent methods by which it was effected. One was, 



THE NATION OPPRESSED. 187 

that when a slave was appointed a tutor he became 
free. * 

Were we to institute a comparison with slavery as 
it existed in the West Indies, when under the En- 
glish, French, Danish, or other governments, or with 
serfdom in Russia, wc would reach the same results. 
The fundamental idea of slavery as it existed among 
the ancients was authority — authority absolute and 
monstrous ; but still authority, and not '^ property .^^ 
In ancient Greece, where the slave had no political 
or civil rights, his quality as a human being, as a 
man, was respected. Even in Rome, where the sys- 
tem was so cruel that one would suppose that some- 
thing like the American idea on the subject prevailed, 
the manhood of the slave was not totally annihilated. 
The old pagan master regarded his servants rather 
as ministers to his comfort or luxury, than as the 
subjects of traffic or sources of revenue. With us 
the slave is not only bereft of his civil liberty and 
rights, but of all his natural attributes, and held to 
be a chattel. 

The non-slaveholding portion of the slave States, 
called by the slaveholders the "white trash," have 
been made to feel most sorely the oppressive charac- 
ter of the slave power. There were, at the com- 
mencement of the war, 347,525 slaveholders in the 
United States. This fraction of a million ruled the 
5,836,952 non-slaveholders almost as absolutely as 

*• Dr. Charles Elliott on Slavery. 



188 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

they did their negroes. In some of the States it was 
enacted by law that no man who did not hold slaves 
should be allowed to hold office, not even that of 
magistrate, to say nothing of those higher positions 
of trust and power, with their emoluments. The fol- 
lowing is the testimony of an intelligent gentleman 
of North Carolina on this subject. "At the very 
moment we write" — 1860 — says the author, "as has 
been the case ever since the United States have had 
a national existence, and as always will be the case, 
unless right triumphs over wrong — all the civil, 
political, and other offices within the gift of the 
South are filled with negro-nursed incumbents from 
the ranks of the execrable band of misanthropes — 
three hundred and forty-seven thousand in number — 
who, for the most part, obtain their living by breed- 
ing, buying, and selling slaves. The magistrates in 
the villages, the constables in the districts, the com- 
missioners of the towns, the mayors of the cities, the 
sheriffs of the counties, the members of the Legisla- 
tures, the Governors of the States, the Representa- 
tives and Senators in Congress, are all slaveholders. 
All the consuls and embassadors, all the envoys ex- 
traordinary, and ministers plenipotentiary, who are 
chosen from the South and commissioned to foreign 
countries, are chosen with special reference to the 
purity of their pro-slavery proclivities. If creden- 
tials have ever been issued to a single non-slaveholder 
of the South, we are ignorant of both the fact and 
hearsay; indeed, it would be very strange if this 



THE NATION OPPRESSED. 189 

much-abused class of persons would be allowed to 
hold important offices abroad, when they would not 
be allowed to hold important ones at home." 

There are few schools in the South, and the poor 
being neither able to send away their children, 
nor employ teachers at their homes, are compelled 
to raise them in ignorance. Thus they grow up, 
generation after generation, without being able either 
to read or write. In South Carolina, one white per- 
son out of every three, over the age of twenty-one, 
is unable to read and write. In New England there 
is only one in every three hundred. Think of the 
difference between three and three hundred. Is it 
any wonder that liberty had no foundation in South 
Carolina? The condition of the non-slaveholding 
whites is little better in other slave States. The 
lands which are worth cultivating are owned by the 
few slave masters, while the non-slaveholding whites 
are compelled to go to the poor mountain regions, or 
dwell on the lands owned by slaveholders. In Ruth- 
erford county, Tennessee, there are fourteen thou- 
sand, four hundred and ninety-three acres of land 
under inclosure, owned by sixteen men ; three of the 
men own more than ten thousand acres. One man 
of the three owns half of the whole township of Mur- 
freesboro. Such is the relation of the slaveholders 
of the South to the lands of the South. These 
lands in many parts of the South have never been 
brought under cultivation. We were astonished in 
passing through Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, and 



190 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

Georgia, to find large tracts still covered witli their 
native forests. 

The same spirit enslaved also the Church. The 
terrible despotism fastened its manacles upon the 
Church of Christ, throughout the entire South. 
Never was a Georgia slave held under power more 
absolute by his master than was the Church by the 
slave power. It was compelled to bring all its influ- 
ence to the support and extension of human op- 
pression. 

It enslaved the press: the press was not half so 
free in the slave States, under the slave oligarchy, as 
under the Autocrat of the Russian autocracy. He 
who dared to publish any thing against slavery, was 
charged with circulating incendiary matter, inciting 
the slaves to insurrection, and disturbing the quiet of 
society. We here present the law of Maryland on 
this subject: 

" Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Mary- 
land, that after the passage of this act, it shall not 
be lawful for any citizen of this State, knowingly to 
make, print, or engrave, or aid in the making, print- 
ing, or engraving, within this State, any pictorial 
representation, or to write, or print, or to aid in 
writin«g, or printing any pamphlet, newspaper, hand- 
bill, or other paper of an inflammatory character, 
and having a tendency to excite discontent, or stir up 
discontent among the people of color of this State, 
or of either of the other States or' Territories of the 
United States, or knowingly to carry, or send, or to 



THE NATION OPPRESSED. 191 

aid in carrying or sending the same for circulation 
among the inhabitants of either of the other States 
or Territories of the United States ; and any person 
so offending shall be guilty of a felony ; and shall, on 
conviction, be sentenced to confinement in the Peni- 
tentiary of this State, for a period of not less than 
ten nor more than twenty years, from the time of the 
sentence pronounced on such person." 

If such is the severity of the laws of Maryland, 
where slavery hardly existed, or at least where it 
existed in its mildest form, what should we expect 
from such a State as Georgia, or South Carolina? 
What, a felony to print and circulate that human 
bondage is an evil ! How strange that such a statute 
as the above should exist in a nation claiming to be 
a nation of freemen ! 

He who was unfortunate enough to violate this 
statute, whether in Maryland or Georgia, Tennessee 
or Kentucky, was seldom so much favored as to have 
the form of a trial. The more general manner of 
dealing with such offenders was to seize them by 
mob violence, and if printers, their presses were de- 
stroyed, while they were summarily punished. 

It enslaved the freedom of speech in the South, 
and public opinion in the North. In the South men 
dared not speak against the institution of slavery, 
while in the North it was very unpopular to do so. 
As though all this was not enough, it resorted to 
individual martyrdom. He who in the South was 
suspected of holding opinions opposed to slavery was 



192 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

at once branded as an abolitionist, and was hunted 
like a wild beast, and when overtaken and appre- 
hended was put to death without the form of a trial. 
Rev. Anthony Bewley was thus murdered, in Texas, 
on mere suspicion, and without trial. 

It enslaved the civil government. When the na- 
tional compact was formed, this dragon of despotism 
was comparatively small and feeble, and had but a 
temporary refuge among us. Soon it was found that 
it had grown to be an unforeseen and unexpected 
power. Grasping the reins of the Government, it has 
held the administrative power in its sacrilegious hands 
for more than fifty years, using it for its own pur- 
poses, or in a manner which has been antagonistic to 
the interests of this country. The office of President 
of the United States has been filled forty-eight years 
by slaveholders, and only kventy years by non- slave- 
holders. The offices of Secretary of State, Secretary 
of the Treasury, Secretary of the Interior, Secretary 
of the Navy, Secretary of War, Postmaster-Gen- 
eral, and Attorney- General, have been under the 
control of the slave power two-thirds of the time. 
The Chief Justices and Associate Justices of the 
Supreme Court of the United States, the President 
pro tern, of the Senate, and the Speakers of the House 
of Representatives, have, in a large majority of in- 
stances, been slavebreeders from the southern side 
of the Potomac. Hardly a session of Congress passed 
without some new demand being made by the slave 
power for its advantage. These demands were com- 



THE NATION OPPRESSED. 193 

plied with from year to year, till the people of the 
free States were reduced, by the passage of the Fugi- 
tive-Slave act, to the humiliating and degraded con- 
dition of slave-catchers. 

History informs us that in the early part of the 
seventh century such was the ignorance and degra- 
dation of our ancestors in England, that women were 
actually yoked up with oxen and asses to plow the 
fields. The reading of this has caused us to shudder, 
while at other times, well authenticated as is this fact 
of history, we have felt like calling in question its 
correctness. More than twelve hundred years have 
passed since our ancestors were thus employed. But 
what shall we say of their Christian children, the 
denizens of a great free government, who were com- 
pelled to join, not to plow the fields with the ox or 
ass, but in the chafse with dogs in pursuit of the poor 
fugitive from the cruelties of the accursed slave 
system ! What degradation ! Who would have thought 
for a single moment that the slave oligarchy of three 
hundred and forty-seven thousand men could have 
thus enslaved the whole Government with its millions 
of free men ! In this instance truth is strano;er than 
'fiction. Our descendants at no distant period will 
almost call in question the truth of these facts of 
history. We blush for very shame when we think 
of our degradation. We would be ready to suppose 
that this law would be a dead letter, but such was 
not the fact. 

Such was the magnitude to which this monster had 

17 



194 THE A.MERICAN REPUBLIC. 

grown, when it made its attack upon the nation's life. 
Having been allowed to dwell in the political heaven 
of the nation, it now makes a demand which the na- 
tion can not grant and continue to exist, for the rea- 
son that it would transform it into the veriest despot- 
ism ; and yet it makes that demand under the terrible 
threat that if not granted the nation shall be destroyed. 
Though this demand was new, similar threats had been 
made from an early day in the nation's history. In 
the first Congress under the Constitution, at the pre- 
sentation of the famous petition in which Franklin 
asked Congress ^' to discourage every species of 
traffic in man," this despotism broke forth in the 
most violent threats. At the time of the Missouri 
question, in 1820, it openly threatened the dissolu- 
tion of the Union. " In 1830, under the influence 
of Calhoun, it assumed the defiant front of nullifica- 
tion ; nor did it yield to the irresistible logic of Web- 
ster, or the stern will of Jackson, without a compro- 
mise." At the presentation of abolition petitions, at 
the Texas question, the compromise of 1850, at the 
Kansas question, at the probable election of Fremont — 
on all these occasions did it threaten the dissolution 
of the Union. 

While these threats, which many regarded as idle, 
were being reiterated, preparations were actually 
making to carry them into execution. As the time 
for perpetrating their plotted treason drew near, the 
leaders in the conspiracy managed to occupy those 
positions in the Government where they might the 



THE NATION OPPRESSED. 195 

more readily consummate their infamous purposes. 
The President, James Buchanan, though chosen from 
the free State of Pennsylvania, was used by these 
conspirators to aid their cause. The Secretary of 
the Treasury was a slave-master from Georgia; the 
Secretary of the Interior, a slave-master from Missis- 
sippi; the Secretary of War, a slave-master from 
Virginia; the Secretary of the Navy, a Northern 
man with Southern principles ; these, with the Chief 
Magistrate, with the oath of fidelity warm upon their 
perjured lips, and their high positions prostituted to 
the lowest perfidy, sat in hellish counsel in the Presi- 
dent's Cabinet, day after day, and night after night, 
adjusting and consummating their parricidal plot. 

The army of the United States was exiled, and so 
far dispersed that when the capital of the nation was 
threatened, the chief in command was unable to bring 
together a thousand troops for its defense. The navy 
was so far dispersed that, when the new Administra- 
tion came into power, there were no ships to enforce 
the laws and collect the revenues in Southern ports. 
Out of seventy-two vessels of war, which constituted 
the navy, only two were available at home, the 
Brooklyn, carrying twenty-five guns, and the store- 
ship Relief, carrying two guns. The public force 
was removed from our forts which dot our extensive 
Southern coast, so that these forts, with the twelve 
hundred cannon which they contained, became at 
once an easy prey to treason. The free States were 
disarmed by a transfer of the national arms from 



196 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

Northern to Southern arsenals. More than one 
hundred and fifteen thousand arms of the latest make 
and the most approved pattern, were removed from 
Springfield and Watervliet Arsenals to difi'erent 
arsenals in the slave States, that they might be 
within the grasp of traitor hands. A quarter of a 
million of muskets, worth twelve dollars each, were 
sold to the slave States for the sum of two dollars 
and fifty cents each. Yast quantities of cannon, 
mortars, ball, shell, and powder, took the same direc- 
tion. The Treasury of the nation was robbed of 
more than six millions of dollars to be used in the 
work of treason. 

Such, reader, is the array of testimony of the truth 
of our proposition, that the slave power of the South 
is the worst form of despotism which ever existed 
among men. When, or where, in the world's history, 
did despotism ever before exhibit such power of evil? 
In the past ages it had fastened chains upon barbar- 
ous and partially-enlightened nations, and that was 
an easy task. But here it dares to undertake the 
more than herculean work of fastening manacles upon 
a nation composed of millions of enlightened freemen. 



THE GREAT REBELLION. 197 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC AND THE PRESENT 
REBELLION. 

"War," says Dr. Bacon, "has a place among the 
agencies through which God's providence is working, 
from age to age, in the interest of the divine king- 
dom, which is righteousness and peace. In the sacred 
books of the Old Testament we have not only the 
record of the wars in which the chosen people ful- 
filled their destiny, but the prayers in which holy 
men commended their country to the God of Hosts 
in time of peril, and the songs in which they ac- 
knowledged that his right hand had given them the 
victory. Under the providence of God, then, and in 
the methods by which he governs the world, war, 
with its dreadful train of evils, is sometimes an in- 
evitable incident in the world's progress. Conflicts 
attendant on the birth or the attempted subjugation 
and extinction of nationalities — conflicts arising out 
of the growth and collision of irreconcilable systems 
of civilization, or the collision of civilization with 
barbarism — conflicts between right and wrong, be- 
tween liberty and despotic power, or between pro- 
gressive and repressive forces — sometimes involve the 
necessity of war." 



198 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

The American Republic was born in the midst of 
a most sanguinary war — a war not of a day, or 
month, or year, but of seven years. Had the nation 
continued as it began, it might have escaped the 
present terrible war. But having broken its life- 
covenant, having failed to develop in harmony with 
the law of its organic life, having lost sight of the 
great purpose for which it was planted by God, hav- 
ing apostatized and become enslaved, war comes as a 
consequence. 

Good men had seen the ship of State adrift in 
the gulf stream of human oppression: they saw the 
manacles fastened upon every limb of the body-politic, 
and uttered their warnings; they wrote and spoke 
against oppression without fear. For years the con- 
test continued, waxing more intense with the lapse 
of time. The antislavery sentiment meanwhile grew 
strong. The oppressed millions of the colored race 
cried aloud before God. God's people pleaded at the 
mercy-seat, year after year, that He who came to 
"proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening 
of the prison to them that are bound," would come 
in great power, and "loose the bands of wickedness, 
undo the heavy burdens, break every yoke, and let 
the oppressed go free." 

The true friends of civil and religious liberty. 
North, South, East, and West, toiled, and wept, and 
trembled, and prayed — prayed earnestly, prayed for 
help, prayed for deliverance — deliverance from the 
serpent which had encircled the nation in its deadly 



THE GREAT REBELLIOX. 199 

coils God answered, and came in the fiery tempest 
of war to consume his enemies and save his people. 
One of liberty's gifted bards has represented this 
coming of Jehovah in the following eloquent and 
sublime strains: 

*' Mine eyes have seen the coming of the glory of the Lord : 
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are 

stored ; 
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword : 
His truth is marching on. 

I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps ; 
They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps ; 
I can read his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps : 
His day is marching on. 

I have read a fiery Gospel writ in burnished rows of steel : 
* As you deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal; 
Let the hero born of woman crush the serpent with his heel, 
Since God is marching on.' 

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; 
He is rifling out the hearts of men before his judgment-seat; 
0, be swift, my soul, to answer him ! be jubilant, my feet I 
Our God is marching on. 

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, 
With a glory in his bosom which transfigured you and me ; 
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free ; 
AVhile God is marching on." 

The present war is only another and striking phase 
of that contest between truth and error which beojan 
far back in the past when our world was yet young, 
and which has continued to the present, and will 
continue till all the opposing forces and opposing 
influences of the truth shall be overcome. 

It was a favorite idea with Hugh Miller that the 
six days of creation represented six geological epochs 



200 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

or periods of past time, in which God was engaged 
in the work of secular creation, and that the Sabbath 
represented the present period, which is the time of 
God's redemption work. That he is now engaged in 
spiritual creation, and that all events are in some 
way made subservient to the accomplishment of God's 
purpose, accords with the faith of every believer in 
Divine providence. That the present sanguinary strug- 
gle will be overruled for man's good and God's glory 
we have not a doubt. 

This great contest between the hosts of freedom 
and despotism, being a part of God's great world- 
plan, is pointed out by the prophet in the book of 
Revelation : " And there was war in heaven : Michael 
and his angels fought against the dragon: and the 
dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; 
neither was their place found any more in heaven." 
Rev. xii, 7, 8. The ground of symbolization in Rev- 
elation is analogy — general resemblances, by which 
objects of one species may be employed to represent 
those of another. A combination of bloody and 
tyrannical rulers is symbolized by a ferocious wild 
beast, because their temper and agency toward indi- 
viduals, communities, and nations, is like that of a 
ravenous brute which kills and devours inferior and 
harmless animals. A vast multitude, united in a 
single community or government, is represented by a 
sea, because of its resemblance to such a collection 
of waters and relationship to inferior and tributary 
communities, like that of a sea to the fountains and 



THE UREAT KEEELLION. 201 

Streams that empty into it; while lesser communities, 
and distant dependent tribes, are symbolized by 
streams and fountains, because of their analogous re- 
lation to some great central community toward which 
they tend. A star, we are told by the Great Re- 
vealer himself, which radiates light, is the symbol 
of a messenger or minister of a Church. A candle- 
stick symbolizes the Church. The woman clothed in 
sunlight and driven into the desert, is a symbol of 
the Church persecuted and driven into seclusion. 

The symbols of the Apocalypse, and of all the 
prophets, are taken, in all cases where the subject is 
of a nature to admit it, from objects or phenomena 
of a different class from those which they are em- 
ployed to represent, but that present striking resem- 
blances in their chief characteristics ; and the fact 
that they are drawn from one department, whether of 
civil life, the animal kingdom, or the material uni- 
verse, which may serve as a representative of another, 
is an infallible token that they are signs, not of 
things in that department, but of something anal- 
ogous in some other sphere of the religious or civil 
world. Thus, when symbols like the first four seals 
are drawn from the military and civil chiefs of the 
Roman Empire, they denote, not such actors and ac- 
tions in that civil and military state, but analogous 
agents and a,gencies in some other body of men, em- 
bracing, like that Empire, all varieties of good and 
bad, and sustaining resembling relations to each 
other ; and in those instances denote the ministers 



202 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

of the Church. When, like the first four trumpets, 
thej are drawn from the material universe thej indi- 
cate analogous agents and events in the world of 
men, and in those instances in the Roman and neigh- 
boring military and civil empires. Babylon, the me- 
tropolis of an idolatrous persecuting kingdom, is 
employed as a symbol of a resembling organization 
of apostate persecuting teachers professing to be 
true ministers of God. When the relation of the 
teachers and rulers of a nationalized Church to the 
civil power of the Empire during a period of perse- 
cution is to be represented, a drunken sorceress is 
exhibited as born by a monster wild beast, the sym- 
bol of the rulers of that empire.* 

With these remarks on the law of symbols we 
shall proceed to an examination of the passage 
quoted at the beginning of this chapter, which we 
claim has reference to the present wicked rebellion. 

The place of this war. This war is said to be in 
heaven. Heaven generally means the place of the 
Church. This is the political heaven, and symbolizes 
the place of the Republic, to distinguish it from the 
earth which symbolizes the place of monarchy. As 
a heavenly existence will be conducive to a higher 
development of the mental faculties than can possibly 
occur in connection with the disabilities of a proba- 
tionary state, so is a republican form of government, 
where freedom of speech and of the press exist, and 

*Lord on the Apocalypse. 



THE GREAT REBELLION. 203 

the benefits of a liberal education are extended to 
all, calculated to raise mankind to a higher state of 
civilization than can possibly occur under any other 
form of government. The weary sons of toil, while 
wandering in this vale of tears, look with anxious 
longings to their heavenly rest; so the denizens of 
the monarchies of earth are anxiously desiring a res- 
idence in our more favored land. Even now, while 
w^e are in the midst of all the horrors of a civil war, 
they are flocking by multiplied thousands to our 
shores. Michael symbolizes the genius of our repub- 
lican government. Michael is a pure, free, unfallen 
spirit, and as such aptly symbolizes the genius of 
liberty. He is the archangel; in the order of the 
angelic hosts, Michael stands first, occupying the 
highest place. Among all forms of government, the 
republican stands highest ; it is that which is adapted 
to the highest order of intelligence. Michael is the 
angel nearest to God, and as such he is a fit symbol 
of that government which God established, and which, 
as a pure Republic, embodies those great principles 
of truth and justice which approximate nearest the 
infinite perfections of Him, of whom it is declared 
that "justice and judgment are the habitation of his 
throne, and mercy and truth shall go before his face." 
Psalm Ixxxix, 14. 

If it be objected that the Government has sanc- 
tioned wrong doing, as in the case of African slavery, 
which is one of the greatest evils known to history, 
and can not therefore be symbolized by a pure celes- 



204 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

tial being, we answer that we must distinguish be- 
tween the genius of the Government as set forth in 
the National Life Covenant, the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, and the Constitution, and those acts of 
wrong doing in the nation. The fact is, slavery was 
a positive and direct violation of the Constitution, a 
wrong which the genius of the Government never 
sanctioned. 

The Church is called "the bride, the Lamb's 
wife" — Rev. xxi, 9 — and yet there are many things 
in the Church which Christ would not approve, and 
to which good men would object, so that here is 
ground for similar objections. Michael is the symbol 
of the genius of our Government as set forth in those 
wonderful instruments, the Declaration of Independ- 
ence and the Constitution. As such the symbol is a 
beautiful and impressive one, giving us an idea of 
the purity of the principles of our free institutions, 
and the holiness and justness of our cause, and the 
great importance of continuing the struggle in which 
we are engaged till the right shall triumph. 

The dragon symbolizes the genius of the slave 
power. " The dragon," says Cruden, " spoken of by 
the prophets was cruel, deadly, and wild." It was 
taken in Scripture for the devil, so called for his 
great strength and bloody cruelty against the saints. 
It is also taken for cruel tyrants, as in the case of 
Pharaoh : " Behold, I am against thee, Pharaoh king 
of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the midst of 
his rivers." Ezek. xxix, 3. The dragon is the 



THE GREAT REBELLION. 205 

prophetic symbol of tfer worst form of despotism, and 
as such it was used by the prophet to foreshadow 
the cruel and despotic character of the slave power 
of the South. It is a remarkable coincidence that 
those who planned the rebellion placed upon their 
own flag the rattlesnake, one of the most venomous 
of serpents, as a symbol of the genius of their own 
government, which they boasted had for its corner- 
stone human oppression. It is also worthy of re- 
mark, in this connection, that those of the North who 
have been in sympathy with the despotism of the 
South, and have done all they could to help the 
dragon, have received the distinguishing cognomen 
of " copperhead," a title of which the leaders seem 
proud. In this the slave power and their sympa- 
thizers have fulfilled the Divine prediction, and estab- 
lished, beyond the possibility of a doubt, their char- 
acter as a despotism. We have asked Southern men 
why they chose this symbol, but have never found 
any one who could give an intelligent answer. To 
us it seems that "it came to pass that it might be 
fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet." 

" This serpent," says Lord, " is a wholly different 
being from that great, red dragon which endeavored 
to devour the man-child. To distinguish him from 
that dragon he is defined as the ancient serpent, who 
is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole 
world — titles which belong only to that great, apos- 
tate spirit who seduced our first mother, and an 
agency that is exerted alone by him. He is a ser- 



206 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

pent, too, having subordinates of a similar nature 
that fight under his standard. The seven-headed 
dragon had no troops of a nature Hke his own." As 
the slave power, as a form of despotism, is of greater 
antiquity than the despotism of the ten-horned dragon 
of pagan Rome, it was meet that it should be sym- 
bolized by that old serpent whose history dates back 
with the commencement of the race of man ; and as 
it is the worst form of oppression known among men, 
it is proper to represent it by the most cruel and 
deadly of all the serpent race. Mark the fact, that 
this antagonist of Michael comes not from abroad : 
it is not an invasion, but a rebellion. The dragon 
and his angels are in heaven, and seem to have 
grown up there. This harmonizes with the facts. 
Our war is not an invasion by a foreign foe, but a 
rebellion — the rebellion of an enemy which has grown 
up in our midst. 

It is generally supposed that there is an allusion 
in this passage to the war in heaven, the abode of 
angels and God, by which Satan was cast out. Be 
this as it may, it is certain that a war might have 
been waged by the inhabitants of the heavenly world 
against the throne of God, with as much show of jus- 
tice, as by the people of the South against the Gov- 
ernment of the United States. ''As the first revolt 
of arrogant selfishness and pride had its birth in the 
highest circles of intelligence," so among a people, 
wdth the best ideas of God and human liberty, has 
the worst forms of despotism ever known among 



THE GREAT REBELLION. 207 

men been permittecMo culminate in open rebellion, 
that it might be utterly destroyed from the earth. 
History tells of other rebellions ; but in most in- 
stances they were the uprising of an oppressed people 
claiming their rights, or resisting the further aggres- 
sions of the oppressor, and hence were struggles of 
right against wrong, liberty against oppression. Such 
was the struggle of the people of England under 
Cromwell, and of the American Colonies against the 
tyranny of the English throne. But here is an up- 
rising of wrong against right, of oppression against 
liberty, of the worst form of despotism against the 
best form of government. Never since the "traitor- 
angel" and his emissaries "first broke peace in 
heaven" has such a diabolical work been undertaken. 
What is it to destroy this nation's life? It is to 
take away the God-given right of liberty in every 
man — the principle of man's rights based upon the 
divinity of his origin — it is to destroy the " latest 
fruits of Christianity and the latest attainments of 
civilization ;" it is to destroy that generative truth 
which, through the struggles of ages, has been work- 
ing forth into the form of a free government ; it is to 
give up all for which Liberty has been struggling, 
and her votaries toiling, and suffering, and dying, 
since the going forth of the hopeful promise that the 
"hero born of woman should crush the serpent with 
his heel ;" it is to accept the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence as an " atheistic doctrine that should be 
trampled under foot;" to admit that slavery is the 



208 THE AMEEICAN REPUBLIC. 

normal condition of man; that the masses are the 
mudsills of the ruling class; that the dark ages are 
preferable to our own; that the lash and whipping- 
posts, manacles and bloodhounds, chains and dun- 
geons, inquisitions and guillotines are preferable to 
free thought and free speech, a free press and a free 
people. 

Never was a war waged for purposes so dark, so 
damnable, so God-insulting, so hell-deserving as that 
which for more than two years past has sought the 
destruction of this nation. And never was a cause 
more holy, just, and good than that in which the 
loyal millions of freemen are to-day engaged in pre- 
serving. 

The prophet plainly declares that the cause of the 
Union shall be victorious by the overthrow and utter 
destruction of the slave power. ^' Michael and his 
angels fought against the dragon; and tl^ dragon 
fought and his angels, and p7''evailed not; neither was 
their place found any more in heaven ^ 

When this war commenced the civil authorities 
seemed to be as anxious to preserve slavery as to save 
the Union. With this purpose all the movements of the 
army in the field were made to harmonize. Escaped 
slaves were returned to their rebel masters ; the prop^ 
erty of rebels was held sacred by the Union army, 
and guarded by Union soldiers. If at any time a 
hungry soldier dared to pluck a little fruit, or gather 
from a rebel garden a few vegetables, he was severely 
punished by being compelled to carry for several 



THE GREAT REBELLION. 209 

hours a heavy fence-rail. Thus did we labor to 
conquer a peace by carefully maintaining the cause of 
the war ; to weaken and disable a powerful enemy, by 
becoming the keeper, and enforcing the labor of four 
millions of his subjects for his sole benefit and sup- 
port; to overcome his resistance by supplying the 
very means without which he would become utterly 
helpless. The conspirators against the nation's life 
grew more bold and defiant under this mode of pro- 
cedure. And why should they not? We were vu'- 
-tually saying to them, ''You are right, and we are 
wrong." They were not backward in letting us know 
their programme. Having planted themselves upon 
the ground of slavery, they declared their purpose to 
make it triumph on this continent, and to make it 
the corner-stone of a social order and a State. 

Our policy brought terrible reverses to our arms. 
It was soon discovered that the rebels, whose prop- 
erty was guarded by our soldiers, and the rebel 
masters, whose negroes were returned, were engaged 
as sharp-shooters in shooting down those very men by 
whom they were thus befriended. All this time God 
seemed to say to us, in language not to be misunder- 
stood, " Slavery must die, and die now, by the en- 
lightened will of the nation, or the nation itself must 
die." Our reverses strengthened the antislavery 
sentiment of the nation; the people said we can not 
afford to give of our money, and, more than all, of our 
precious sons, the flower and hope of the nation, to 

be sacrificed in catching runaway negroes, and guard- 

18 



210 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

ing the property of rebels, and thus carry on a boot- 
less warfare. Men in high places began to say, " If 
slavery is in the way, let it perish." Others said, 
" Slavery by its own act has outlawed itself, and 
ought to die,'' Others, who seemed to see with more 
clearness, affirmed that " slavery being the cause of 
the war, the only way to end the war was to destroy 
slavery." Europe, in the mean time, talked of recog- 
nition, while she sent over upon us a constant stream 
of antislavery sentiment, which had been rising and 
gathering strength for more than a third of a cen- 
tury. The nation listened to the voice and heeded 
the teachings of Divine Providence. Slavery was 
abolished in the District of Columbia, forever pro- 
hibited from entering the Territories, and finally de- 
clared abolished throughout the rebellious States. 

President Lincoln, from the very commencement, 
felt the weight of his responsibilities, and his need 
of Divine help. On leaving Springfield, Illinois, to 
assume his responsibilities at Washington, he said to 
the multitude that assembled to witness his departure : 
" The task that devolves upon me is greater, perhaps, 
than that which has devolved upon any other man 
since the days of Washington. I hope that you, my 
friends, will all pray that I may receive that assist- 
ance from on High, without which I can not succeed, 
but with which success is certain." The inhabitants 
of Springfield, who, with weeping, listened to these 
words, as they fell from the lips of their fellow- 
citizen, the new President, responded : " Yes, yes ; 



THE GREAT REBELLION. 211 

we will pray for you." ^'What a debut, ''^ says Gas- 
parin, •' for a Government ! Have there been many 
inaugurations here below of such thrilling solemnity? 
Do uniforms and plumes, the roar of cannon, tri- 
umphal arches, and vague appeals to Providence, 
equal these simple words, ^ Pray for me ?' ^ We will 
pray for you !' Ah, courage, Lincoln ! the friends 
of freedom and America are with you." 

Not only did the people of Springfield pray for 
the President, but from every city, and village, and 
open country place throughout the free North, from 
the innocent child kneeling by its mother's side, 
to the man white with hoary age ; from the friends 
of civil and religious liberty in the South, and from 
the enslaved millions of the rebellious States there 
went up earnest intercessions to God for his blessing 
upon the President. Nor were these petitions con- 
fined to the American Republic ; but in Europe, and 
in lands far away, the friends of '' freedom and of 
America" offered up to God devout prayer for Mr. 
Lincoln. 

These petitions were heard, and the blessing of 
wisdom and of grace rested upon the President. He 
had not mistaken the "task which devolved upon 
him," nor the source of his strength, nor the ap- 
pointed means of securing it. Never before did any 
one occupy a position of greater importance, nor one 
where a Divine guide was so much needed. When 
a distinguished statesman said to him, " Mr. Lincoln, 
we want a fixed policy;" he replied, ^'Th-at is just 



212 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

what I donH want." He has a policy grand as it is 
simple, a policy which seeks to follow the guiding 
hand of God, and which does the right thing at the 
right time. He has an able cabinet, but he is Presi- 
dent, standing above them all like Saul the son of 
Kish. He possesses that element of true great- 
ness — self-government — ^in a remarkable degree. He 
never speaks in haste nor in anger. He reads pass- 
ing events with a prophet's ken, and seems to dis- 
cover, intuitively, the true character of the men who 
surround him, under whatever disguise they may 
come. His official documents are his own. No bor- 
rowed rhetoric adorns them. They are within the 
comprehension of all. They are brief, comprehensive, 
exhaustive. When he leaves a subject little remains 
to be said upon it. 

His is the highest order of greatness — moral great- 
ness. He is " an able man, of such as fear God, a 
man of truth, hating covetousness, and known among 
the people." He is a most remarkable man, and 
seems to have been raised up and fitted by God's 
special providence, as was Washington, for the re- 
sponsible position which he occupies. The people 
trust him without a waver; his political opponents 
testify their appreciation of his ability. The noble 
heroes who have stood by him during the three years 
of the war have shown their high appreciation of the 
Commander-in-Chief by reenlisting for three years, 
or till the end of the war. He has the remarkable 
faculty of holding in proper check the impulsive 



THE GREAT REBELLION. 213 

radical and of urging forward the slow conservative, 
and is all the while in quick and hearty sympathy 
with the judgment and conscience of the great body 
of the people. 

When he believed the time had come for the 
Emancipation Proclamation, it was issued in the face 
of strong opposition, leaving results with God. That 
act places the name of Mr. Lincoln in the list with 
those of Washington, and Wilberforce, and Buxton, 
and others, who constitute the lights and landmarks 
on the cliflfs of time. 

The Emancipation Proclamation of the President, 
on the 1st of January, 1863, was the occasion of 
great rejoicing among a portion of the people, while 
others — really the tru-e friends of the Union cause — 
regarded it as impolitic, and feared the consequences 
to the border States. A third party came out in 
strong opposition to the Proclamation, affirming that 
the war was no longer waged for the restoration of 
the Constitution, but for the destruction of slavery. 
This party was made up largely of the '' peace 
Democrats," with a small addition of those who had 
been professedly in favor of the war. This party 
became very marked in its opposition to the Govern- 
ment and the war. 

The providence of God in the war began to be 
seen at this juncture in a most striking aspect. 
With the Proclamation came a succession of the 
most glorious of victories. Lee was defeated by 
Meade at Gettysburg. While Lee was on his retreat 



214 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

the guerrilla chief Morgan, and his band, were cap- 
tured in Ohio. Gen. Grant, by a succession of mili- 
tary operations which justly entitle him to the honors 
recently conferred upon him, shut up in Yicksburg a 
large rebel force, and cut them off from all hope of 
being relieved, and compelled them to surrender. 
Gen. Banks and his brave associates were as success- 
ful at Port Hudson as Grant at Yicksburg. The 
Mississippi was opened and placed under our con- 
trol, by which the enemies were deprived of those 
supplies, both domestic and foreign, which they had 
drawn in so large quantities from the trans-Missis- 
sippi territories. Texas, with its supplies for South- 
ern soldiers, by these movements of Generals Grant 
and Banks, was cut off, and Virginia and the Caro- 
liiftls had to look elsewhere for beeves and hogs to 
feed their soldiers. Gen. Rosecrans moved upon the 
army of Bragg on the 24th day of June, driving it 
from its strongholds in the mountain-passes south of 
Murfreesboro, and from the formidable fortifications 
at Tullahoma, across the Cumberland Mountains and 
the Tennessee River. Later in the season Rosecrans 
took possession of Chattanooga, while Gen. Burnside 
moved into Eastern Tennessee and took possession 
of Knoxville. The battle of Chickamauga was the 
price paid for the key to the Southern Confederacy — 
Chattanooga — and while a portion of the Union 
forces upon the right were defeated, another portion 
upon the center and right, under Thomas, was victo- 
rious, inflicting great damage unon the enemy, and 



THE GREAT REBELLION. 215 

foiling them in their purpose of retaking Chatta- 
nooga. The Union army was placed under the com- 
mand of Gen. Grant, and reorganized and reenforced ; 
and when Bragg had weakened his army by sending 
Longstrcet to attack Burnside, Gen. Grant, on the 
23d of November, made an attack upon Bragg, and, 
for three days, inflicted upon him a series of defeats, 
in which Generals Thomas, Hooker, and Sherman 
were the Union commanders. The Unionists were 
completely victorious at all points, taking several 
strong positions, forty-six pieces of cannon, five thou- 
sand muskets, valuable stores, and seven thousand 
prisoners, besides killing and wounding great num- 
bers of the enemy. This success was achieved at a 
loss of only forty-five hundred men. Soon after 
Longstreet was defeated at Knoxville, and all hope 
on the part of the rebels of reconquering Tennessee 
blasted. Such were the results following the Eman- 
cipation Proclamation. 

The opposition in the North seemed to culminate 
in Ohio, where, through the blindness and madness 
of its leaders, it was given a direction which resulted 
in its overthrow, and that, too, in a way which 
greatly helped the Union cause. Thus did God 
*' make the wrath of man to praise him, and restrain 
the remainder of wrath." 

In nothing was the providence of God more marked 
than in the moral change wrought in the national 
mind during the year, on the subject of slavery. 
The work of a whole century seemed to be accom- 



216 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

plished in a single year; for such revolutions, hereto- 
fore, have been accomplished only in a long series of 
years. True, a part of the people had been moving 
in the right direction for years, but the vast distance 
passed during the year of our Lord eighteen hundred 
and sixty-three is without a parallel in the history 
of the world, and can only be accounted for by the 
special interposition of God. This great moral revo- 
lution has not been confined to the Northern States; 
it has swept most, if not all, of the border States, 
and is sweeping over those still in rebellion. Senator 
Maynard, of Tennessee, said : " I thought the Presi- 
dent's Proclamation at the time it was issued a very 
impolitic measure, and gave the President my reasons 
for thinking so. I now see that Abraham Lincoln 
was, in this, as in other things in which I have dif- 
fered with him, right and I wrong. The Proclamation 
is the heaviest blow which has been struck at the 
rebellion since it began." Mr. Maynard is not alone 
in this change of views so frankly and candidly ex- 
pressed. He represents the change which has passed 
upon multiplied thousands North and South, on the 
subject of slavery. Men have said to the writer in 
Tennessee and Alabama, that they were not willing 
that a slave plantation should be left in the Union; 
that slavery had been their greatest curse, and they 
would not rest till it was utterly destroyed. Such 
are the feelings and views of men who are still the 
owners of slaves, and who, but a short time ago, were 
pro-slavery in their views. 



THE GREAT REBELLION. 217 

This great moral revolution is to sweep on till 
slavery has no more place among us as a people. 
The prophet declares that "its place shall not be 
found" in the Republic, which means that it shall 
cease to be. The fact is, slavery is virtually dead 
already. Louisiana has chosen an antislavery Gov- 
ernor; Arkansas has just abolished slavery; and 
Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Maryland, and Vir- 
ginia are all on the road to liberty. God has brought 
the nation back to that high ground occupied by the 
fathers of the Republic. We have come back to our 
solemn Life Covenant, and to-day the nation stands 
up in its own majesty, battling with the dragon on 
the ground of the great declaration, " that all men 
are created equal, endowed by their Creator with in- 
alienable rights, of life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness." To-day, thank Heaven,- we stand where 
our fathers stood on the great question of equal 
rights. That which they regarded a great evil, and 
which they and their children knew not how to get 
rid of, God, by his inscrutable providence, is destroy- 
ing. The very course which the votaries of slavery 
hoped would extend its dominion so far out over the 
area of freedom, that the slave roll would be called 
at the foot of Bunker Hill, and establish it perma- 
nently, has been overruled by High Heaven for its 
overthrow and utter destruction. Never was the 
nation more willing to do and suffer for the cause of 
the Union than now. We seem to have been drawn 
by the Divine Hand in close sympathv with this great 



218 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

work. The soldier, on the day of the battle, goes 
out willingly to lay his life, if need be, upon the altar 
of liberty. When wounded or sick they never com- 
plain. We remember to have been deeply impressed 
with this fact at the terrible battle of Chickamauga, 
and in visiting the hospitals of Tennessee, Kentucky, 
and Indiana. Never before had we seen such perfect 
resignation and patience under severe suffering; we 
could not but feel that God had manifested himself 
in a special manner to these noble men. In the hour 
of death he has seemed especially near to save and 
bless. When before were extensive revivals of re- 
ligion known to occur in an army while in the midst 
of a great war? 

Look, too, at the means used for the moral instruc- 
tion and physical comfort of the soldiers by the na- 
tion through the Christian and Sanitary Commissions. 
Surely, ^'the Lord of hosts is with us, and the God 
of Jacob is our refuge." Soon, it is to be hoped, 
we shall come out of the fiery ordeal a wiser, a better, 
and a mightier people. Heaven speed the day of 
triumph, and of an honorable peace ! 



REPUBLICAN SUPREMACY. 219 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE GENIUS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC TO 

DESTROY THE MONARCHIES OF 

THE WORLD. 

In the great metallic image, God, by the prophet, 
has symbolized the whole history of monarchy, from 
Babylon down to the time of its utter destruction. 
"Thou, king, sawest, and behold a great image. 
This great image, whose brightness was excellent, 
stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. 
This image's head was of fine gold, his breast and his 
arms of silver, and his belly and his thighs of brass, 
his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of 
clay." Dan. ii, 31-33. The prophet gives us the 
interpretation of this image. It is a symbol of all 
the monarchies of the world, in the order in which 
they were to exist, till monarchies should cease. 

Babylon came first in order of time, and was 
then in existence. " Thou art this head of gold," 
said the prophet to Nebuchadnezzar, the reigning 
monarch of Babylon. The next monarchy in order 
was the Persian, or, as it is sometimes styled, the 
Medo-Persian. " And after thee shall arise an- 



220 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

other kingdom, inferior to thee." That this second 
kingdom was the Persian, represented by the ^' breast 
and arms of silver," is evident from Dan. v, 28, 
where Daniel, in giving the interpretation of the hand- 
writing upon the wall, at the request of Belshazzar, 
the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar, interprets Peres 
to mean, "Thy kingdom is divided and given to the 
Modes and Persians." 

The third kingdom was the Macedonian, symbol- 
ized by " the belly and thighs of brass." It is well 
known that the Persian Empire was followed by the 
Greek or Macedonian. 

The fourth kingdom was represented by the "legs 
of iron and the feet of clay and iron," and was the 
old Roman Empire. This is evident from the fact 
that the Roman Empire followed the Grecian, or 
Macedonian ; also from its answering perfectly to the 
description of the prophet. This fourth empire, after 
existing in great strength and power for a series of 
years, was to receive an element of weakness, rep- 
resented by the " clay which mixed with the iron," 
which, it is said, made the kingdom "partly strong 
and partly broken." This mixing of the clay and 
iron undoubtedly represents the Union of Church and 
State, effected under Constantino, and which was a 
cause of feebleness, not only to the civil power but 
to the Church. Between these two properties, the 
clay and iron, there Avas no affinity, they did not 
adhere ; " they did not cleave one to another." What 
affinity can there be between Christianity^ and the 



REPUBLICAN SUPllEMACr. 221 

principles of monarchy? What a cause of evil this 
union of Church and State has been ! 

This fourth empire was to be " broken," " divided ;" 
the number of parts into which it was to be divided 
is represented by the ten toes of the image. It is 
well known that about the middle of the fifth cen- 
tury of the Christian era Rome was sacked by Gen- 
seric, king of the Vandals, and the empire from that 
time was parceled out among ten separate govern- 
ments. These ten divisions were to be monar- 
chies, for there was to ^' be in them the strength 
of the iron." This fact is fully sustained by the 
truth of history. None of these empires were to be- 
come universal, and bear rule over all the earth, as 
Rome had done before it was broken. The Roman 
Empu'e was to be the last monarchy which should be 
universal. This is clear from the facts symboUzed 
by the image. Ignorant of these facts of prophecy 
the first Napoleon made an attempt at universal em- 
pire. It was with a view to this that he divorced 
Josephine. But at the battle of "Waterloo this great 
captain was conquered: "and this," says Victor 
Hugo, " was not because of Wellington, nor because 
of Blucher; but because of God. It was time this 
vast man should fall. . . Napoleon had been im- 
peached before the Infinite, and his fall was decreed. 
He vexed God. Waterloo is not a battle; it is the 
change of front of the universe." 

Russia, too, but a little time ago, undoubtedly 
looked in the same direction. Extending over one- 



222 THE AMEEICAN KEPUBLIC. 

seventh of the area of the globe, she thought the 
remaining six-sevenths might be conquered, and Rus- 
sia made mistress of the world. But the Crimean 
war brought nothing but defeat to the Russian arms ; 
which checked the ambition, and cooled the war spirit 
of the nation, and hastened the death of Nicholas. 
It also led to emancipation under Alexander, who 
saw serfs could not contend in battle against freemen, 
and that if Russia would succeed in the future in 
maintaining her present position among the Euro- 
pean powers, saying nothing of universal empire, she 
must lead to the battle-field freemen, with motives 
before them higher than those placed before her late 
defeated serfs, whom she had tried in vain to make 
good and brave soldiers while she held them as 
slaves. 

These monarchies were to remain in this ''broken" 
or "divided" condition till they, in their turn, shall 
be destroyed. So they have remained, so they now 
remain, and so they shall remain till swept away by 
the strong arm of liberty, as chaff by the wind. 

The "stone cut from the mountain without hands" 
symbolizes the whole of republican government 
from its 'rise in the days of the kings, to the end of 
time, just as the metallic image symbolized the whole 
of monarchy. This Republic, thus symbolized, was 
to destroy the monarchies of the world. " Thou 
sawest till that a stone was cut from the mountain 
without hands, which smote the image upon his feet, 
which were of iron and clay, and broke theiii to 



REPUBLICAN SUPREMACY. 223 

pieces." " And in ^the days of these kings shall the 
God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never 
be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to 
other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume 
all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever." This 
distinction is to be perfect, as is evident from the lan- 
guage of the prophet. Under the destroying power 
of the Republic, monarchies are to ''become like the 
chaff of the Summer thrashing-floors ;" and it is 
added, " And the wind carried them away that no 
place was found for them." This language is figura- 
tive, but easy of comprehension. The idea is, that, 
as the chaff is easily carried away with the wind, so 
shall the destruction of monarchy, when the time 
appointed by God shall have come, be easily accom- 
plished by this fifth power; and as the chaff is car- 
ried away by the wind, so shall the Republic do away 
with or utterly destroy these monarchies. 

The attack is to be made at the point of the union 
of Church and State, symbolized by the mixing of 
iron and clay. " The image was smitten upon his 
feet, that were of iron and clay." This work of de- 
struction, then, is to commence on the doctrine of 
Church and State union, and from thence move for- 
ward till monarchies shall have no place on earth. 
We are not informed what this mode of attack shall 
be, but are inclined to the opinion that this great 
work is to be accomplished by the power of our ex- 
ample. Our experiment in the separation of Church 
and State has been carefully observed by the Euro- 



224 THE AMERICAN KEPUBLIC. 

pean powers from its very beginning, and our success, 
carefully noted. Already its influence is telling upon 
those monarchies. Englishmen are discussing the 
importance of a separation of the Church from the 
civil power. Already there is a large party of intel- 
ligent men who are connected with the Established 
Church, saying nothing of the dissenters, in favor of 
such a change. The truth is, England is free in 
fact, while she is a limited monarchy in form. One 
of her great wants to-day is a system of common 
schools, by which all the people shall be educated. 
She needs to say what Penn said when he founded 
the Colony of Pennsylvania, as quoted by Lord Ma- 
caulay in the English House of Commons, and urged 
upon her as a duty, ^'Educate the people F' She has 
already asked and received a synopsis of the Ameri- 
can common school system, from a distinguished gen- 
tleman of New England. Italy is manifesting a good 
deal of interest on this subject just at this time. 
Wise and pure statesmen in Europe are coming over 
to this American idea on this great subject. That 
shall be a glorious day for the Church throughout 
the Old World, when it shall be separated from the 
State. The accomplishment of this shall go far 
toward doing away with monarchical forms of gov- 
ernment. Whenever monarchies shall have followed 
our example in this separation of Church and State, 
it will open the way for imitating our forms of polity. 
Written constitutions, embracing a declaration of the 
sovereign will of the people, shall be granted, and 



REPUBLICAN Sb'PKEMxVCY. 225 

thus shall the repuBIic, by the power of example, 
bear away monarchies as the '^ chaff is carried away 
by the wind." 

Already our Government has made itself felt on 
the other side of the Atlantic. Go stand on the 
shore of old ocean at evening-time, when all around 
is calm. In the distance you hear the roaring waves, 
which soon dash upon the beach in all their terrible 
grandeur. You ask, why all this commotion of the 
sea? and you are told that there has been a storm 
far away at sea, and the waves which it created have 
come to tell us of the fact. So the great popular 
waves set in motion by this Government, surge and 
break on the shores of Europe, moving the people, 
shaking thrones, and disquieting kings. Let it once 
be seen that no government is so stable as that 
w^hich springs from the people, and is every year 
responsible to the people, then shall monarchs trem- 
ble upon their thrones as they have never done be- 
fore. The ruling powers in Europe have no sympa- 
thy with our Government ; but it is not so with the 
masses : they feel a deep interest in our prosperity. 
When we shall have passed through our present 
struggle, and demonstrated the stability and power 
of our republican Government to be infinitely greater 
than that of all other governments, then shall mon- 
archy receive a most terrible shock. Who can fore- 
see the influence of the final success of the Union 
cause — which is not distant — upon the powers of 
Eui'ope? The people will unite in one grand exulta- 



226 THE AMERICAN KEPUBLIC. 

tion ; and how many demands they shall make at 
the hands of their rulers remains to be seen. The 
tendency of things the world over is toward the 
good of the whole. That remarkable man, the Czar 
of Russia, is doing wonders for the masses. He 
has emancipated twenty-three millions of human be- 
ings, to whom he has loaned money, at low rates of 
interest, to purchase homes : thus not only making 
them free, but providing for them homes, and holding 
up before them motives to the highest industry and 
economy. This seems to be the age of emancipation. 
But a few years ago and slavery existed in the 
British, the French, and Danish West Indies, and 
the possessions of Holland in South America — in all 
of which the terrible curse has been "abolished. 

Russia entered upon a new era of prosperity only 
some fourteen years before America declared her in- 
dependence, and became a nation. She commenced 
her career with a system of oppression fastened upon 
her, of such antiquity that history has made no 
record of its beginning. America, too, commenced 
her career with this same curse, though in a worse 
form, fastened upon her. Both nations have grown 
with wonderful rapidity ; and it is a singular coinci- 
dence that the same year that the Czar proclaims 
the freedom of twenty-three millions from his throne 
of autocracy, the President proclaims freedom to the 
millions of slaves in the Repubhc of the United 
States of America. That a proclamation of freedom 
should come from the throne of autocracy is as great 



REPUBLICAN SUPREMACY. 227 

a wonder as that -skrvery should exist in our Re- 
public. 

All Western Europe to-day feels the rising, mov- 
ing power of the masses. The world will be edu- 
cated; the angel of light has gone forth upon her 
Divine mission, followed by the angel of liberty, ex- 
claimiag, ''Remove the diadem, and take off the 
crown." Louis Philippe, who, during his exile, was 
a common-school teacher in the United States, on 
ascending the throne of France introduced the Amer- 
ican school system among his people, and carried it 
to such perfection that there was a free school in 
France for every five hundred and sixty-five of the 
population. The result of this increase of light was 
to drive the king from his throne in the night, dis- 
guised in a blouse coat and slouch hat, with only a 
five-franc piece in his pocket, which represented all 
his power. That system of common schools has been 
crushed by the Jesuits ; but as the rays of the sun 
at evening-time are seen after the sun has disap- 
peared behind the west, so the light reflected by that 
system is still seen in its influence upon the great 
mass of the French people. The Emperor of the 
French is kept busy with the people. He finds 
them troublesome, for the reason that he is compelled 
to ask them if he may reign. He is doing much for 
the people with a view of uniting them to his throne, 
and making its occupant secure ; but it is just what 
shall shake it to its fall. Never did a monarch oc- 
cupy a throne more insecure than the present Napoleon. 



228 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

Count Agenor De Gasparin, in his Uprising of a 
Great People, remarks : " I am not among those who 
condemn democracy without appeal. Are not we 
[the French] destined some day to pass into its 
hands? Have we already begun to glide down the 
descent [he should have said up the ascent] that 
leads to it? It is possible." Yes, Gaspariii, it is 
more than possible, it amounts to a certainty, an 
absolute certainty, that France shall continue to rise 
till she reaches that status of intelligence where she 
shall demand that form of polity which is purely re- 
publican. That land which gave to the cause of free- 
dom on this continent, in the hour of darkness and 
terrible conflict, her Marquis de Lafayette, her ships 
of war, her brave soldiers, her sympathy, and her 
money, shall, at no distant day, be as free as is 
America. She shall yet see the temple of liberty 
now rising lift its culminating dome amid the break- 
ing light of the world's coming morning ; while over 
her sunny hills and verdant vales, in her beautiful 
cities and villas, in palace and in cottage, shall every- 
where be heard, chanted by her free millions, another 
Marseilles hymn, the hymn of liberty. 

Our success in republican government will as cer- 
tainly create a desire on the part of the people of 
Europe for republican government as that the efi*ect 
follows the cause. There is a natural law which 
runs all through human society, which leads one to 
desire that which another possesses, should it be of 
advantage to him. Thus, if the farmer observes that 



REPUBLICAN SUPREMACY. 229 

his neighbor has introduced a hihor- saving machine 
which has proved a success, he introduces it also. 
The same is true of the mechanic in his shop, of the 
chemist in his laboratory, and of the professional 
man in liis study. It is in harmony with this law 
that the useful arts are spread among men, and man- 
kind advanced in civilization. Man's progress does 
not consist in the acquisition of new faculties, but in 
the discovery and application of truth. 

The same general law w^hich leads one man to 
adopt the useful discovery of another operates wdth 
equal certainty upon communities and nations. Hear 
what Gasparin says of us to the people of France : 
" The United States set out on the road which led 
to liberty of belief, of thought, of speech, of the 
press, of assemblage, of instruction. The most con- 
siderable, most important rights were abstracted, in 
the outset, from the domain of democratic delibera- 
tions ; insuperable bounds were set to the sovereign- 
ties of members ; the right of minorities ; that of the 
individual ; the right of remaining alone against all 
others ; the right of being of one's own opinion was 
reserved. Furthermore, they did not delay to break 
the bonds between Church and State entirely, in such 
a manner as to deprive the official superintendence 
of its last pretext. This is a great conquest, and 
the wJiole future of the modern world is contained, in 
it.^' He adds : " Such is the genius of vVmerica, 
such is the impetuosity with which it confronts and 
fiurmounts difficulties, such is the power of its popular 



230 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

mottOj ^Go ahead F that, through struggles, cries, 
and momentary exhaustion, it has attained the stature 
of a great people. Count the steamboats in its rivers, 
estimate the tunnage of its vessels, compute the 
amount of its internal trade, measure the length of 
its canals and railroads, and you will still have but 
a faint idea of what it is capable of undertaking and 
accomplishing." 

Every European nation has its Gasparin, who is 
speaking to the masses of the advantages of our 
republican form of government. And how long will 
the people listen to these descriptions before they 
will demand for themselves the thing described? 
And if our progress as a nation, under the disad- 
vantages and difficulties of slavery, has been such as 
to produce impressions so favorable upon . the great 
minds of Europe, what shall be the impression which 
our progress shall make in the future, delivered as 
we shall be from the evils of slavery? That will 
be a glorious day for the world, when monarchies 
shall cease to be, and republican government every- 
where prevail ! 



UNIVERSAL DOMINION. 231 



CHAPTEK XIII. 

THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC DESTINED TO BECOME 
UNIVERSAL. 

We have seen that the Republic of the United 
States is to destroy the monarchies of the world. 
Such being the fact, either there must be a vacancy, 
a cessation of civil government in the world, or repub- 
lican government must take the place of the destroyed 
monarchies. We can not suppose, from what we 
know of God's government of the world, that there 
will ever be a time when human government shall 
cease to exist among men. During the time of the 
Hebrew theocracy, God gave the law and taught 
men how to administer that law; but, after all, the 
instrument of administration was human, and not 
Divine. Now, as there can not be a vacancy or 
cessation of civil government, then must republican 
government, the destroyer of monarchies, take their 
place. And as the Republic occupies all that por- 
tion of the world not occupied by monarchies, there 
being but the two forms, when it shall take their 
place, then shall it be universal. No other form of 
government than the republican shall then exist 
among men. 



232 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

God, through the instrumentalitj of the Church, is 
preparing the world for this universal dominion of 
republican government. This view is in harmony 
with the teachings of God's Word. 

There we are taught that after the destruction of 
the monarchical form of government, which had been 
universal, another form, that form which God him- 
self taught mankind, should become universal; that, 
as all mankind had tasted the bitterness of oppres- 
sion under monarchy, so should all mankind taste the 
sweets of liberty under the republican. 

"And the stone which smote the image became a 
great mountain, and filled the whole earth." The 
same fact is clearly set forth in the book of Revela- 
tion. The man-child, which is a svmbol of the 
United States of America, was to "rule all nations." 
Here, then, it is declared that the Republic of the 
United States is to fill the earth ; that is, it is so to 
occupy the place of government in the world, as to 
leave room for no other government. Under its mild 
sway all nations shall be brought, and the nation's 
prophetic insignia of "jE/ Flurihus Lhiiim^' be fully 
realized. This view is not only in harmony with the 
Word of God, but with the desires and expectations 
of mankind. The monarchs of the world already 
feel and fear the aggressive power of free principles. 
Glad would they have been, much as they profess to 
hate slavery, to have seen the slave power crush our 
free Government, and blot out the last vestiges of 
liberty in America. But the people, the vast millions 



UNIVERSAL DOMINION. 233 

who constitute the body of those nations, are praying 
for our success, and are hoping for free government 
in Europe. This desire is fast becoming world-wide ; 
and, like the oppressed African in our own land be- 
fore the war, they expect the day of freedom, of 
universal freedom, will come. Shall not He who 
planted that hope in the bosom of earth's oppressed 
millions bring about its realization? . 

This view is in harmony with a universal law of 
mind. Man will always, sooner or later, adjust the 
forms of polity under which he lives to his status 
of intelligence. The revolutions which from time to 
time have shaken the earth, and rent asunder em- 
pires, is but a working out of this universal law of 
humanity. Now, as the whole world is to be brought 
under the influence of Christianity, and, through its 
wonderful transforming power, raised to the highest 
state of civilization, and as all men will take to them- 
selves that form of polity adapted to that high state 
of intelligence, and as that form is the republican 
form, therefore will republican government become 
universal. 

This view harmonizes with the Divine plan regard- 
ing the universal dominion of Christianity. The fact 
of the universal spread of Christianity over the world 
is so clearly a matter of revelation, that no one calls 
it in question. All events, though we may not al- 
ways see it, are made subservient to that one great 
accomplishment. Now, as the republican form of 
government is that form which God has appro\ed and 



284 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

established, and which he intended should be to his 
Church under the new dispensation what the Hebrew 
Eepublic was to his Church under the old dispensa- 
tion, then so surely as Christianity shall fill the 
earth, so certainly will republican government become 
universal. 

No other form of government is adapted to our 
Christian civilization. God made man a sovereign; 
sin has made him a slave. The Gospel comes to his 
rescue, and proposes to break his chains, and elevate 
him to a position of " freedom in Christ," where he 
shall be ^' free indeed." Man thus lifted up by God, 
in the very nature of things, demands as a sovereign 
a free government. 



PERPETUAL DOMINION. 235 



CHAPTER XIY. 

THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC PERPETUAL. 

As Christianity, which God gave to save the world, 
is to continue as long as there are men to be saved, 
so republican government, which God gave to govern 
the world, is to continue as long as there are men 
to govern. 

This position is sustained by the Word of God. 
The prophet declares of the fifth power set up by 
the God of heaven, "that it should never be de- 
stroyed;" it should not "be given to other people," 
but "should stand forever." As men shall become 
wiser and better, our forms of polity will doubtless 
undergo changes, which shall harmonize more per- 
fectly the acts of administration with the organic 
law of our national life. 

Our laws shall be less complicated, and more 
strictly in keeping with the higher law — God's re- 
vealed Word. Our rulers shall more of them be 
"able men, such as fear God; men of truth, hating 
covetousness." Now, the great body of the people do 
not love and fear God; but in the "good time com- 
ing," " gravitation shifting shall have turned the 
other way," and they that shall be with Christ shall be 
more than all that will be against him. Yes, the 



286 THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

day is coming, thank Heaven, when righteousness 
shall be in the ascendance. 

Surely a high destiny awaits the United States of 
America. That will be a glorious day for mankind, 
when free government shall prevail throughout the 
world. Let us be thankful that we are citizens of 
this great, free Government — a Government which is 
to become universal, and exist when the " earth shall 
be full of the glory of the Lord," and the universal 
shout ascend the skies, "Halleluia, the Lord God 
omnipotent reigneth!" 



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